Red Chuck

Re: Lucky

I think when I grow up, I'll have a fish bird.

-Harrison

Snow Howl / Jaws of the Beast

I love this somewhat terrifying picture of Lucky. It captures him doing what he does best - barking. Barking is Lucky's life's work. We often joke that he has a quota of barks he must release each day, when in reality, he just loves barking. Barking is his art. Look at how he throws his whole upper-body into it. In this shot you can see the amazing physicality that goes into a full-throttle Lucky howl - the head thrown back, the fangs revealed, the throat taunt, the hair flared. Truly his bark is a marvel of nature! Barking is the aria of his dog-nification - it extends the signature of his transcendent canine animus in a piercing arch across the azure pages of heaven. "O vaulted, cerulean canopy, feel my vocal punches, hear my syncopated dog hymn: ruff. . . ruff RUFF ruff. . . ruff RUFF!" and so forth.

Yeah. . . so Lucky's incessant barking is fucking driving me crazy. Especially after being iced-in with him for 48 hours. All weekend he stood at the window, barking at neighborhood kids on sleds, at timid birds in the front yard, at the occasional squirrel on the deck and at the gathered movements of, what must be, invisible predators, because every fourth time I went to investigate his furious dog yelps, I looked out of the window to find nothing. So you say your dog is driving you crazy? No, my friend, you need to spend some time with our neurotic mutt. Come experience extreme barking. We got plenty of it.

Stopping to Sniff the Frozen Flowers

Valentines Boxes

I love these awesomely cool Valentines Boxes Harrison & Helen made last weekend.

Harrison constructed his from an old iPod box. Instead of dropping Valentines into a slit in the top, Harrison's box snatches Valentines with it's Sesame-Street-monster-like mouth. He attached 3 matchbox cars to the bottom for mobility. As you can see, it is decorated with hearts and traditional St. Valentine googly eyes.

Helen's Valentines box is also outfitted with wheels. It actually goes really fast. The two plastic ambulances underneath have pull-back-and-let-go suspension. Helen's box shot all the way across the kitchen upsetting both Lucky dog and her brother, whose box doesn't roll anywhere near as fast.

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Superbowl Sunday

22 adults + 23 children = 45 peeps (including our own bad selves). O the humanity!

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Old Fashion Time Game

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Tonight, after dinner, Harrison played this "Old Fashion Time Game" (his words). This game obviously requires a fork, a cup, and one of Dad's old beer bottle caps. Yeah. Pretty sad. Almost Walker Evans sad. I should have changed the photo to black & white to really bring out the Rural South / Post Depression pathos of a boy playing catapult with his Pa's discarded bottle caps (but if I'd done that you would have missed out on all the great reds in the photo). So where was I? Oh right. Walker Evans. Old Fashion Time Game. Yeah, so that's the kind of fun we're having around the house tonight. Maybe tomorrow night we'll go play kick the can in the street.

Anyway, as sad as that is, after I took his picture, Harrison said, "Dad, you should put that on the blog."

My 6 year old son used the word blog.

Now that's 21st Century sad.