Mike an' Co B-ing Weird in the Woods

Mike took a break from his foto-album reminiscing 2 take a walk in the woods w/Dee and the kids, like I was saying in the comments yesterday. Here's what he had 2 say abt this:

April,

[Dear formerly little sis.] There are times in my life when I have wished that I was able to lower myself to take a gift from my mother-in-law, Mira Sobinski, to get new baby equipment, if for no other reason than to get her to be quiet about it. For example, we have a baby back carrier I use to carry my son when the whole family goes on long walks to see the changing colours of the leaves. My mother-in-law took a look at our baby back carrier, which is a perfectly fine carrier. In fact, when Gordon Mayes used it to carry his son, it was the top-of-the-line model. But you know my mother-in-law. She will pick, pick, pick at things, and then say something idiotic like, “You are putting your child at risk, not using a new baby back carrier. I will buy one for you.” That would be wasted money. Of course, we had to refuse.

The carrier we have is perfectly nice. But if you were to listen to my mother-in-law talk about how it has no harness straps, so my son isn’t harnessed into the carrier so he could fall out; or how it doesn’t have a strap around my chest so if my arms let go of the shoulder straps he could fall out; or how the seat was set in such a fashion that my son would probably spend most of his ride kicking me in the side; or how the metal frame is just a single metal bar twisted like a question mark at both ends and a proper frame would have a metal bar running both across my back and my son’s back and not bear all the weight of my son into a bar pointed directly into my back. Blah. Blah. Blah. How my mother-in-law can talk about things which are completely unimportant for a good back carrier. If it was good enough for Gordon Mayes, then it’s good enough for me.

Yesterday was a perfectly beautiful day. It was as if the person who colours our landscape usually with pink and purple silhouettes, decided to come out of her slumber and do her job for a change. I decided to wear my usual Patterson man shirt and sweater ensemble; while my lovely wife Deanna opted to wear sunglasses, which she kept taking on and off for some reason, and she walked the entire walk with her hands in her pockets. She said her hands were cold. My daughter was wearing pink and spent most of the first part our walk through nature carrying a maple leaf and saying, “Look! I’m Canadian.”

The leaves were so colourful, I believe they actually attracted the attention of my son. As for me, there were moments when they were so beautiful; I simply had to close my eyes. Of course part of that eye-closing was from the pain of my son digging his feet into my sides. I had to grit my teeth and take it. After all, I am a father and fathers are not allowed to cry when they are doing fatherly kinds of things. It did distract me though. My daughter said she saw a squirrel on the side of a tree, which she said was bigger than her head, but I doubted that. Squirrels only get that big when our friend Mark Trail sees them.

We were going along pretty well, when I suddenly snapped. My lovely wife Deanna said, “Don’t snap at me like that, Michael.” I tried to say I wasn’t the one who snapped, but it certainly did sound like that “Snap!!” came out of my head. Fortunately the rest of the walk, there wasn’t any more snapping. However, I could tell my wife was upset, since her body width suddenly exceeded mine, and I got the feeling it would be awhile before my more kind and gentle, feminine wife would reappear again. My daughter jogged along with her arms curiously kept close to her sides, and my son wiggled and dug his feet into my hips again and again as he reached and pulled and reached and pulled. I think he must have been watching my lovely wife Deanna’s exercise video and decided to do an imitation of it, while we were walking.

After several minutes of this, my head began to bow low from the pain of the back carrier. My daughter sensed my distress and took my hand. She said, “You can make it daddy!”

We got back to our house and I felt things were not right. The front door had its usual half-circle of glass, but the handle was different and the wall where we hang our coats had bent and moved closer to the door. It was quite disconcerting. Deanna had her sunglasses off and she lifted my son off my back, while my daughter slunk over to the corner and took off her pink coat in an awkward fashion, which attracted my attention.

When my lovely Deanna got my son onto the floor she noticed a few things coming out of his pants which were not the usual things which come out of his pants. I can tell you for once I was relieved when my gobsmacked wife said, “Look what’s coming out of your son’s pants!” to find it was only leaves this time. Of course the reason my son gave for putting leaves down his pants instead of in his coat pockets did involve his observation of me and some rolled-up socks, so I can’t say I am wholly blameless in his interesting storage techniques. I did learn I will need to keep the door on our bedroom locked when I am dressing. All of these things were quickly forgotten when we discovered my daughter had put a very large squirrel in her coat.

As it turns out, she was exactly right about how large that squirrel was. Fortunately for us, we called up our friend Mark Trail, and he was able to find a place for this squirrel, which my daughter named “Biggie”. As Mark drove away with Biggie, my daughter cried the bitter tears of one who has a lost a friend she grabbed off a tree during an afternoon walk through the woods. My son cried too, when we put his leaves outside. And of course, Deanna cried because everyone else was crying. It was an emotional day.

After today, I look forward to staring at more photo albums pictures with my daughter. They may be dull, but they don’t chatter at you and bite.

Love,
Michael Patterson

Mike, I'll bet we cd get Mom 2 come up w/the idea of buying U a new kid-pack. Like, I cd leave an article abt baby-pack safety in a place where Mom wd find it, then she'd go out and buy one 4 U as a surprise, and then U'd have no choice but 2 accept it graciously an' praise Mom 4 her wisdom. What do U think? Shd I try it?

Ger wants us 2 start auditioning new bass players, but I'm still holding out sum hope that Dunc's fam will change their minds an' come back 2 Mboro from Barbados. But NEway, he, Eva, Luis and I R gonna meet @ Ger's place 2 jam.

Apes