Alex fell out of bed ...

... but didn't wake up.

They insist on sleeping with the light on. In the future they're going to regret that, because it means we can take photos like this one.

Viewing Statistics Quiz

I use Google Analytics, to see just how many people aren't reading this blog.

In the past month, there have been 408 page views, by 253 unique visitors.

One entry has been massively more popular than the rest. It's had 159 views (of the 408). The entry in second place has had 13 views. (That's ignoring the 113 people who looked at the home page).

We could make a quiz about that. Which entry was it? (Clue: almost all of them were sent here by Google.) But then I might forget to give the answer, and you might not notice it. So I'll post it below.



























It was the entry on sledding in Big Bear. It's hard to find information on where to go sledding in Big Bear.

What to say to realtors

We went to look at a house today, which was for sale by owner.

Both a seller and a buyer can use a realtor. The purpose of a realtor when you are buying a house seems to be to look on the internet for you to see if there's a house you might like, then drive you to the house to look at. They charge something like 3% of the purchase price to do that. As we can use the internet, and have a car, we don't see the need for a realtor.

The owner asked Susanne if we have a realtor representing us. They didn't have a realtor - so we felt a bond. They too had rejected these people who seem to me to be unnecessary parasites. As houses cost a lot, and you get 3% for buying OR selling a house as a realtor, you don't need to buy (or sell) a lot of houses to make a reasonable amount of cash. I read somewhere the other day that there is one realtor per 76 people in Southern California.

No, said Susanne. We don't have a realtor. They're pushy and obnoxious and serve no purpose except to irritate us. And they are parasites on the face of the planet. (Actually, those weren't her exact words, but she did use the word pushy.)

I asked the owner if she was selling the house herself. "Yes" she said. "I'm a realtor."

Luckily, we've realized that part of the job of being a realtor is to ask lots of questions which sound like you're being friendly. But in actual fact, you ask those questions to everyone and don't listen to the answers. So realtors just ignore everything you say.

"Well" she said, "If you need someone to represent you ...".

Enough ...

Sometimes I get behind with this blog. Sometimes I have to make an effort to write about something before it gets pushed out of my brain by the next exciting thing that happens. (When I download photos from my camera, there are occasional bizarre photos, I remember that I took the photo because I was going to blog about it, but I forget why it was interesting).

Anyway, on a blog called Boobs, Injuries and Dr Pepper, the author has similar woes. In a post called New Year, New Deductibles to Meet she writes:

"As I stumbled to the bathroom in the middle of the night, the corner of my foot encountered the resistance of the metal wheel on the bottom of the desk. I heard an unnatural crunch and then a high, reedy whistling sound. As it turns out, the whistling sound was the my brain informing my toe that it was fuuuuuuucked up.

As I fell to the floor in a fetal position, I wheezed, "But, I don't need more blog material."

(Deductibles are tax deductibles. The tax year ends on December 31st, so people are thinking about tax; health care costs are deductible.)

Fire

Inspired by things like The Dangerous Book for Boys (which Grandma bought for Christmas for the boys) we decided to go to the beach and have a fire. This being America, you can't have a fire just anywhere (that's not just American overcautiousness - substantial parts do burn down on a reasonably regular basis), but there are 'fire pits' on the beach.

So we went there to cook lunch and singe our extremities.

We learned a number of lessons, for next time.

1. Bring some water. It's better than apple juice or diet coke, when you burn yourself.
2. Bring a small table. That way, when you leap away from the fire (when you burn yourself) you don't scatter sand onto everyone's food.
3. It might have been better to do it in the evening, or on a colder day. It was quite warm (23 degrees, on the 13th of January, he said smugly), and a fire was unpleasantly hot, rather than pleasantly warming.

Martin Luther King

Continuing our occasional series about American history, here Alex explains about Martin Luther King.




Since they've learned about Martin Luther King, they now know about race, and can identify who of their friends is black, who's white (like them) and who's brown. I preferred it when they didn't know, it's like they've lost a little bit of innocence. One day they won't believe in Santa Claus either. But I won't mind that.

Our Complex

Fiddling about on Youtube, I found this video, advertising our apartment complex. It's very well shot, making it look a whole lot swankier than it actually is.




I've never seen that fountain - although I've heard it exists. Notice that the gardener has black trash bags on his mower. That's because they put the grass into black bags, and throw it away. The grass they show is watered so furiously you can never actually sit on it. It's too wet and muddy. The last minute (of a 2.5 minute video) is about a mile away. Walk there, it says. But don't walk home again, cos it's up a steep hill.

Nose Job

The piece of selloscotch tape above came out of Daniel's nose. We're not quite sure how it got up there. Daniel says that he doesn't know, Alex said he was smelling it. (My finger is there for scale, I've got quite a big finger and he's got quite a small nose).

We discovered that Daniel had a piece of tape up his nose shortly before it was time to leave for school. We spent a while trying to make him blow it out, which got nowhere - mostly because he's not much good at blowing his nose, and partly because he tends to sniff immediately after.

I took Alex to school while Susanne started to dig with some tweezers. I was all for sending him to school - I figured it would work it's way out, and it wasn't really toxic. But I sought the advice of other parents, who said I should ask the doctor.

However, on January 1st we changed health insurance plans. To register with a doctor you need your health insurance card, and for reasons that I suspect are due to someone's incompetence, we didn't have them for the boys yet. (I had one, Susanne had one with my surname on, which is no use because they always want some other form of ID). So, we didn't have a doctor. We rang the NurseLine (think NHS Direct) and asked them what to do. Just like with NHS Direct, they told us to take him to the Emergency Room.


I had visions of glamorous doctors and nurses rushing about shouting things like 'clear' and sitting on top of trolleys pumping on people's chests whilst dealing with the crowds of people in the waiting room with heart attacks and gunshot wounds and car accidents and drug overdoses whilst exchanging the sort of looks that people exchange when they slept together for the first time last night, aren't sure if it was a mistake, and don't know if anyone else knows.

But before we could experience this excitement for ourselves, we had to find the ER. Our nearest hospital is called the Centinela Freeman , and is the place that Kanye West's mother was taken, when she died. I knew where the hospital was (we go past it quite often) but not where the emergency entrance was - so we circled the block until we found it.

I stopped the car outside the entrance and took Daniel in (I was practicing for when there was blood spraying from him). The waiting room was not really like the waiting room on ER. For a start, it was rather small - maybe 15 chairs, in total. There was a window where you registered, and a large fish tank, with only 4 fish in it (there could have been more hiding). There were two other people in the waiting room - what looked like a mother and her (about) 10 year old daughter. We were in their for a while, and I think one other person came in. No one was bleeding. No one was on a trolley (I didn't even see a trolley). The doctors and nurses didn't exchange any kind of looks, except slightly bored ones. An ambulance drove in, fairly slowly, and then drove away again.

Despite the lack of people, the main feature of the trip to the hospital consisted of waiting - just like in England. First, I had to see someone to fill out the insurance forms (I felt slightly foolish filling in the section that said "Nature of problem"). Then we took Dan to see a nurse who did things like weigh him, and take his temperature and pulse - that seemed a little unnecessary given that he'd had a bit of tape up his nose for a little over an hour at that point, but I suppose they need to be sure.

Then we went back to the waiting room and waited. Then we saw another nurse who took us to a triage room where we waited. (With a bizarre bed that seemed to double as some sort of cage; and several magazines to read, but all on quilting - really, I didn't know there was one magazine on quilting). Then another person came to see if we were there, and we waited some more. And then the doctor came, with a small entourage of 3 people. (Daniel was very impressed, because the doctor was bigger than Daddy).

He had brought with him the "getting things out of children's nose kit". Got a pair of long, blunt nose (which made me happier) tweezers, had a member of entourage hold a light, and hoofed out the piece of tape (pictured above), which was much larger than we thought it would be.

We filled out more forms and went to school. Daniel was very excited, and kept his identification bracelet on to show his teacher. He told Alex about it, at some length, which made us slightly nervous in case Alex thought that it so exciting that he should stuff some tape up his nose too. But that hasn't happened (yet).

What?

At about 8pm on Christmas Eve, in Oceanside (on the way back from Legoland) we decided that the best thing to do for food would be to find a supermarket and buy something like sushi, or failing that, some microwave meal. We couldn't stand the thought of more delivered food at our hotel, and we had a room with a 'kitchenette'. Trader Joe's was shut (they have some bizarre idea that their staff might prefer to do something other than sell me ready meals on the evening of December 31st), so I went to Vons. Vons was closing at 11pm that day (but was back to 1am on the 1st of January, so the sign on the door told me).

I shopped, which was a moderately stressful experience, Susanne and the boys were waiting in the car, the sushi was all sold out, I couldn't find my way around this large, strange supermarket, and I'd just had two days at Legoland. When I'd finished, the woman on the register (who, incidentally, didn't seem to feel that working on a supermarket checkout was her calling, and particularly didn't seem to feel this on the last day of the year) said: "Helpow?"

"Huh?" I replied.

"Hell-Pow?"

I looked blank. She looked as if she was losing patience. "Help. Out?" she repeated, slowly and clearly.

Now I understood the words, but had no idea what she meant. Sometimes in Gap, they ask you if anyone helped you out in the store, but that didn't seem likely. Was she asking if I wanted to help out with something? If I wanted her to help out with something? If I wanted someone else to help out something? Or help me out? But help me out doing what? I didn't know what to say.

"Errrmmm.. No" I said, looking for any kind of reaction that this was really wrong and stupid, and I should change my answer to "Yes". But there was no reaction at all, and so I left the shop, relieved.

A Peculiarly Unpleasant Ride

This was a ride that we didn't go on. The big hydraulic arm thing swings you about in the air in an unpredictable, and potentially nauseating fashion.

Then, as if that wasn't sufficiently unpleasant, your friends, or random onlookers (in this case, Alex and Dan) can pay money to attempt to hit you with what they called a water bomb, whilst you are suspended and out of control.

Legolanded Out

We went to Legoland, on the 30th of December, and then again on the 31st, for the New Year's Eve party - the second day was free, if you went on the first day. My camera died part way through the two days, so you don't have to sit through as many photos as you might have done. In particular, there were some quite impressive Lego structures, as you can imagine (or if you can't imagine, search Flickr for Legoland).

This is the entrance, in case you're not sure where you are:
This was a signpost, which I thought quite clever. It said things like Legoland: Denmark, 17,342,232 Lego bricks, and Tipperary: Long Long way.
Family photo:
Earthquake zone. One of the boys' favourite things to do was to build structures on this special vibrating table, and then turn it on so that they collapsed (the structures, that is).

Lego Christmas tree - strictly speaking, it's made of Duplo, not Lego.



Train ride: Unfortunately, only one adult was allowed per carriage, so I had to miss out on my turn.


This was a very large maze structure, to be used when children had too much energy.

The other favourite thing of the boys was the Driving School, where they drove a car around in circles. This came in two flavours - the Junior - for 3 to 5 year olds, and the non-Junior (they didn't give it a name) for 6-13 year olds. The smaller one was a little too dull for the boys, but they weren't officially old enough for the big one, and each child was asked their age before going on. We had a brief period of moral turmoil (well, S did) before training the boys to say "Six!" when asked how old they were. I was worried they'd fluff it at the last moment, so I kept poking them and asking them how old they were. Alex almost got it wrong once or twice in practice "Fff..Six!", but when the crucial time came, they got it right.

The driving school was sponsored by Volvo - here's a Lego Volvo (except for the wheels).

On the second day we hired a stroller, which was a bargain at $12. It got us the odd strange look, but it made for much less tired (and therefore grumpy) boys (although slightly thinner boys, 'cos they had to be squeezed in it). It also made for less tired (and therefore grumpy) parents, because the extra energy we expended pushing them around in the thing was a whole lot less than the extra energy we would have expended telling them to hurry up, pleading with them not to sit on the ground, consoling them because of their sore knees/legs/feet, and picking them up when the other had pushed them over.

There had been some stuff on the website about bringing dry clothes, because there was a water play area. We ignored it - it was December, after all. But it was also Southern California, and so on the second day it was (just about) warm enough (which means that Susanne thought about taking her jacket off). The water play area was fairly large and elaborate, with water coming from all kinds of different places. Notice the big bucket at the top.


Every four and a half minutes a bell would ring and the bucket would empty its contents onto anyone standing below.
Which made anyone in the vicinity a little dampl

And here's a video of the earthquake zone:

Banned Books

S has banned books from the bathroom. I was more than half way through The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was a really good book. And I finished The Ghost Map too, which I'm going to blog about on some other blog.

But more importantly, if I don't read those books on the toilet, where can I read them? And (between you and me) I tend to find that if I don't have a book to read, I tend to get bored leave the, errrmmm, area too soon, and then have to go back to finish off what I should have finished the first time.

Christmassy Video

Here's a video of boys opening presents.

Christmassy Pictures

Here's some pictures from our Christmas Day adventures.

First, to Mother's Beach, in Marina del Rey. It's not a desperately pleasant beach, but it's got a playground which the boys like. (As in they like a playground, wherever it is, and they particularly like this playground.)

The beach is at the end of the marina, and so tends to be rather muddy, and the water doesn't look desperately pleasant there.

Then Alex and I went for a walk, to try to find a mountain to climb, while S and Daniel went to Beverly Hills to potter about. We didn't find a mountain, but we did find Will Rogers State Park (we were trying to find somewhere else, which I'd forgotten both the name and location of, so it's not surprising we didn't find it).

As we sat there (eating clementines, on a picnic table, if you want a complete reconstruction of the scene) a deer wandered by. After some encouragement, Alex wondered if it was Santa's deer.




The second time we saw it, the setting was less rusty.









There were also some impressive views. (Click on the picture, and then click on it again, and you can zoom it up quite a long way. Then you can see the festive oil tankers.)

True Meaning of Christmas

We were driving through Santa Monica on Christmas day, and passed some life size Nativity Scenes (and thanks to the power of the internet, you too can see them here, here, or here).

The boys asked what they were. I said they were Nativity Scenes.
"What's a Navitivy scene, Daddy?"
"Well, they're scenes of when Jesus was born. Do you know who Jesus was?"
"No."
"Well, Christmas happens because it was at this time of year that people say that Jesus was born, and some people say he was the son of God. Do you know who God is?"*
"No, Daddy".
"Well ...." but luckily their goldfish like attention spans had moved on, and I didn't have to explain that one. At least in England, where they don't have this separation of church and state business, they tell them this stuff at school.



*Of course he wasn't born at this time of year. What were shepherds doing watching their flocks in December?

Moments of Genius

All parents have anecdotes where they provide evidence of the giftedness of their child(ren). We're no different, so here are two of ours.

Daniel (I think, but it could have been Alex) was trying to express a negative number (he was trying to explain something like how sad he was, I forget). He doesn't know about negative numbers though. So he said that he was "G9". In the elevators here (and in our previous apartment) the floors are numbered 1, 2, 3, as you go up. The garages are below, and so go G1, G2, G3 ...

S was driving through Santa Monica the other day, and passed Google's offices (which, incidentally, are a whole lot less impressive than Yahoo's Santa Monica offices, but I digress). When they saw the Google logo on the side of the building, they said "Look, it's the word on the computer!"

(Aaron, a friend from work, suggested it was the colors not the letters that they responded to. But in my urge to only seek positive information about the giftedness of our children, I ignored him.)

Sledding in Big Bear

The purpose of the trip to Big Bear was to play with a sled. (It's called a sled, not a sledge. A sledge is a really big hammer, and when you go into a shop, and ask for a sledge for them [pointing at your 5 year old twins, who smile back sweetly] they think something's wrong.

It's quite hard to find a good place for sledding. If it's really good, then someone's made it into a ski slope, and if it's not, it tends to have trees, buildings, rocks, roads, cliffs, or something else inconvenient in the way.

The first day we found a place in the woods, without too many of those impediments.

For the second day, we asked around a bit more, and found a closed road. I tested it first, and found it to be sufficiently uneventful.

Then we put Daniel on the sledge, at the top of short, not especially steep bit that ended with a flat bit. He went down the hill, went over the flat bit, and kept going. We ran after him, shouting things like "Shit" and "Oh shit" and "Daniel jump off", while onlookers leapt out of the way and looked surprised. The problem with this road is that there is something of a steep drop on the right hand side. Where we were there was a ridge which gave some protection (you can see it on the video earlier). But later on it was much reduced, and he went over this, and about 10 feet down the much steeper hill, which fortunately had fresh snow and therefore wasn't conducive to speedy sledging. I stopped by crashing into a snowboarder and knocking him over (he was possibly feeling pleased that he'd managed to avoid Daniel; but he took it well) and we helped Daniel to get back up.

A friend of the snowboarder (who had a sled) said "I've been trying to do that all day".

Dan seemed rather unfazed by it all. He claimed not to have been worried, but he didn't go on the sled on his own for a while. After that, we found a better slope, with a longer stop before the barrier, and we took turns being 'in goal'.

Update: A commenter asked where this was.

The first video was taken in the woods. On the map, here, we parked on the 18, and went into the woods. We looked for places that other people were parked with sleds. Parking was a little tricky - there was a bit of a layby, and we walked through the wood for a while to find a good spot.

The second day was somewhere around the center of this map. It was on a gated road, that led up the side of the mountain. When we got home and looked at the map, I think we were looking for here.

Mallard Bay Resort

We stayed in a cabin, which was part of Mallard Bay Resort - that sounds more elaborate than it is. It was actually a collection of 9 (?) cabins.


That's ours, with the open door.

Having stairs was a novelty, which never wore off.




It had a swimming pool too, but they'd drained the water out. And what they hadn't drained out was frozen.


The cabin was very pleasant, but also very, very cold. It had a gas heater, and a gas fire. The gas fire looked nice, but had no effect on the temperature of the cabin (as far as I could tell). The heater didn't look nice, and had a small effect on the temperature of the cabin, but was fighting single glazed drafty windows, and -9 C outside. There were lots of warnings about being charged extra if you ran the heating at night, so I put it to 50 F (the lowest temperature the thermostat could cope with), the heater then ran all night anyway, because it coudn't warm the room to 50.

That's slightly unfair though, as it was open plan, and the heat tended to go straight upstairs, warming the bedrooms slightly, before sailing out through the windows.

Big Bear

We went to Big Bear Lake which is a town, which is near to, but separate from Big Bear City. It's also right next to the lake, which is also called Big Bear Lake, but it's a lake, not a town. It's all very confusing, but if you call it Big Bear, everyone seems to know what you're talking about.

We went there, so that Alex and Dan could play in some snow. And so that they would understand the true meaning of 'cold', and not say 'I'm freezing' because the temperature has dropped below 15 centigrade (that's about 60 in old money).

Anyway, rather than write one really long post, I'm going to write more than one (how many? We'll have to see) shorter posts, partly because I suspect that you don't have the attention span to read them, but mostly because I don't have the attention span to write them.

The main winter attraction of Big Bear is snow for skiing, and the like, but it's also reasonably attractive. The picture below shows the lake, and the solar observatory. (For reasons I forget, but I'm sure you could find out with 5 minutes worth of Googling, Big Bear Lake is a particularly fine place to put a solar observatory).

Having been in Los Angeles for a year, all the boys winter stuff is a) ineffective and b) too small. I went to a shopping to buy some winter boots for them - they wouldn't come, so I had to take a too small boot for comparison), and found some in a supermarket. (I also had to buy some for me - I took some boots, but somehow managed to take two left boots.**) The boots were something like $25 a pair, for thickly padded snow boots. At the cash register, the person serving was shocked by the price - "Are you sure you want to pay that much?" she said. I said "Hahahaha, you mad woman, I'm paying 12 pounds and 50 pence for a pair of boots, and you think it's too much." Actually, I didn't, I said "Is there an option?" and laughed.

When I left, I found out there was an option, because there was a K-Mart just down the road, where I imagine they would have been much cheaper. (I was in Vons, think Sainsbury's 20 years ago; for K-Mart, think a really grotty old, really big, Asda, then take all the friendly people out, make sure all the trolleys don't work, and make the aisles just a little too small).


**If you wondered, a few years ago, Vegetarian Shoes announced that they would stop selling Doc Marten's Boots, and as I'd worn nothing but, for the past few years, this was potentially traumatic, so (much to Susanne's annoyance) I bought all they had in stock, in my size. So I have something like 4 pairs of identical boots, hence the two left boots mistake is easy to make. (They almost immediately started selling a substitute, which is almost exactly the same).

Daniel's First Sentence

Daniel made a computer, from a cardboard box (not a real computer, obviously). He wrote what I believe to be his first spontaneous (written) sentence on it - that is, without someone telling him what to write, or him asking how to spell something. Here's the picture:



It says "Daniels and not Alexs".