Mister Mom

One great advantage of going somewhere new is that everything you find there is new. This, at first blush, seems obvious. But as it is usually Toni who drafts our itinerary when we travel, and it is also Toni who traditionally has to find satisfying diversions for the children on a daily basis - Toni or Kelly - I have found myself, over the past few days, simplifying what was at first a mad attempt to have something wildly entertaining to do every single moment of the day.

Such mania led me, on Tuesday, to drive over an hour with the kids to South Burlington for some childrens' theater. This wasn't a waste of time (though I could, like Sedaris did in Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol rather trollishly critique the young actors' work) but I did find myself, in the interests of time, settling for a rather sad pizza joint for lunch, and then drag the sleeping children to the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory, where Orson remained asleep and Zelda was terrorized by the sight (and loud sound) of stuffing being injected into a bear carcass.

We've been staying closer to home since. This is just fine, as the Monpelier/Plainfield area offer a number of swell sights. After discovering the Kellogg-Hubbard Children's Library yesterday, today we returned for what is possibly the best storytime anywhere. Not only did it last an hour, Zelda lasted an hour enjoying the back and forth engagement of books and songs, and it concluded with a craft. Thanks, Megan!

Only Orson was bored, because lately he simply wants whatever looks interesting which is out of his reach. A fish hanging from the ceiling? Well, nothing else will do, then.

Yesterday it was the Cabot Creamery. Tell me, when exactly did sites of in terest begin their presentation by offering a thuddingly boring video? People used to tell us the history of a place as we went along (which was great) now we get an A&E style documentary about cooperatively owned Vermont dairies and darnit, I got out of the house so they kids wouldn't be watching tee vee.

Of course, for the two minutes they sat for it, it was the only tee vee my kids have seen all week. So that's been a plus. Also a handicap, at least when I have the desire to go to the bathroom alone or something.

The tour of the creamery, by the way, was a hit - though, again, we had an issue with big, scary machines. That crate cheese.

My off-time has been rigorously enjoyed. I have been rising at 5 or 6 to take in a run, today the woman from the help desk and I ran together, and she led me through an old trail I never would have found myself. The evenings have been spent desecrating Shakespeare or, as was the case last night, I had been asked to participate in one of the informal readings that happen every evening, just a hodge-podge of whatever everyone else is working on. It was different to feel involved.

It has been odd, being the guy with the kids. I have no idea how my presence has been received by the other young women in this dorm. I have been the only man living in the building, and that's been kind of weird, frankly. And if you were a young Grad student working in a high-intensity writing environment, you might resent having to deal with little kids running around or having tantrums in the middle of the night. But the women in their 30s or older treat me like some kind of saint when they learn who I am and what I'm doing here.