early onset notlistening

There was a brushfire in the hills on Sunday, and as we sat listening to the roar of the fire planes passing overhead, Max told me all about an unfortunate (and apocryphal) scuba diver who got sucked up into the belly of one of those planes and dropped directly into a blaze.

“W. told us about it,” he told me. “They found him in a tree.” Mia, sitting next to him, nodded solemnly.

“Wow,” I said. “That sounds like a lousy surprise when you’re scuba diving, doesn’t it?” They both concurred, and we observed a brief, respectful moment in honor of the not-really-fallen aquatourist.

And then Mia looked up and said this:

“Daddy, W. told us that once, there was someone scuba diving and there was this fire, and when one of those planes came to the water to get water to put out the fire, the scuba diver got sucked up into the plane—”

The fact that I was laughing must have distracted her from her story, because she stopped mid-sentence.

“Wait,” she said. “Have you heard this story before?”

 

a good lesson

Mia has a habit of denuding plants. She stands in front of a bush and strips off leaves, her fist clamped around a branch like she’s stripping wires. It’s a mostly harmless habit, except that it tends to leave our patio littered with detritus from our Japanese boxwoods, and it tends to leave our Japanese boxwoods a little less boxy. 

I’ve told her to stop enough times – sometimes in elevated tones – and the message finally sank in. This morning, she and Max were on the patio, playing with some boxwood leaves, and she turned to me and explained that she’d found those leaves – she didn’t take them off the bush, so I shouldn’t be mad. I decided to take the opportunity to paint some gray shades, explaining that the prohibition on picking leaves is not absolute. If you’re going to use the leaves, that’s fine, I said – but you can’t just stand there and pull them off because it’s fun to pull them off. “Sometimes it’s fine to pull the leaves,” I began, before Max stepped in helpfully to finish the sentence.

“If you don’t see us,” he said. “If you don’t see us do it, we can do it. Right?”

 

safety net

Someone jacked my identity again. Well, maybe not my identity, but my credit card’s identity, and really, what’s the difference? And not “again,” technically, since the last time it was Sarah, but since I’m the guy who spent quality time on the phone with collections, well, I feel entitled. 

Anyway, this time doesn’t look so bad – someone up in Washington (damn tweakers) bought about a thousand dollars worth of stuff from Toys R Us, and Amex called me, and I told them no, and we’re good, I think. But if not, if things go bad, we should be alright anyway.

When I hung up with Amex, Mia asked what the call was about, and I explained that it was the bank, and that someone had bought something with our money, and that the bank was fixing it. To which Max responded, “Daddy, it’s okay, because me and Mia, we still have plenty of money.” So that’s comforting.

Also: Max was naked from the waist down when he said this, so take it for what it’s worth.

 

life above the underground

I haven’t written much lately.

I know, I know, this is the second time in as many posts that I’ve started with that. It’s self-evident by now, surely. And all the same reasons apply – competing work, shorter Max-naps, less time in general for writing. Add to these the fact that we’ve had a somewhat sleepy last month, and there’s just not that much material for me to work with. The kids are beautiful. The kids drive me crazy. The weather’s beautiful. The weather’s disappointing. The customs are funny. The customs are strange. We’ve covered this ground, every square inch. And since I’m doing what I can to keep this exercise enjoyable, I’m not going to force the words. Sorry.

(Still, the weather really is gorgeous. It’s been in the high 50s lately, with pale, cloudless skies and soft breezes. I’ve put away the hats and the coats, and today I walked out of the house wearing flip-flops, only because I could. I remain disappointed in the winter’s snow output, but having said that, if I had a Weather TiVo, I’d pause it exactly here.)

It’s 9 o’clock on a Wednesday evening right now, and I’m writing this before preparing for a trip to Paris. We leave in about 12 hours, and by “we,” I mean me and the kids, both of whom are sound asleep right now, which is their (not insignificant) contribution to my preparations. Sarah is already there, in a hotel just off the Champs Elysees, so the rest of us will travel without her, via slow train, from Basel to Paris-Est, tomorrow. The trip will take 5½ hours, plus another hour and a half in the car to Basel. Just me and the kids.

So, uh, that should give me something to write about.

In the meantime, there is something I’ve been meaning to get to since we moved here, but haven’t had a chance. I was reminded of it about two weeks ago, when Switzerland invaded Liechtenstein, nearly provoking the first hot war on Swiss territory in nearly 300 years. (Napoleon overran the place in 1798, and there was a small civil war in the 1840s, but I’m not counting either of those. Get your own blog.)

This really happened, by the way. On the evening of March 1, a company of 171 Swiss infantrymen wandered into the woods in the dark and ended up about a mile inside Liechtensteinian territory, maybe because Liechtenstein failed to weigh its vegetables before getting into the checkout line at the Migros, I don’t know. Whatever the reason for their misdirected rage, I learned two things:

One, the Swiss Army obviously doesn’t have this version.

And two, it’s a good thing the Swiss have a solid defense.

That’s dee-fense, by the way, as in “The ‘85 Bears had a great defense.” As opposed to a good offense, which we know they haven’t got. (To quote the Liechtensteinian spokesman, “Dude, seriously? They did what? Because we didn’t notice a thing. Is this a joke?”)

What I mean when I talk about the Swiss defense is something I didn’t know much about before moving here: the Swiss underground. Specifically, the network of bunkers and tunnels and underground lakes that protects the country from a repeat of its Napoleonic fate. Basically, the whole place has been hollowed out and carved up, with hangars and nuclear shelters and airplane runways and who knows what else hidden inside the mountains. It looks like a regular country, but if you scratch the surface you find a giant colony of mole rats.

It’s pretty cool.

Remember that tunnel I wrote about? The one between Luzern and Interlaken? It was six kilometers long, and it had Sarah trying to claw her way out of the car. Yeah, well, it turns out that’s also the world’s largest nuclear shelter, with room for 20,000 people. And, oh yeah, it’s mined with explosives on either end, in case Liechtenstein gets any ideas. It’s true of all the country’s bridges and tunnels – supposedly, it would take them 20 minutes to send this country’s transportation network back to the 18th century. If Napoleon ever does come back, he’s going to have to climb some mountains and wade through some rivers.

Here, here are some pictures. First, a few I snapped around Zug. They’re air vents, which wouldn’t be special in any way, except that they’re located in the middle of grassy meadows and on the side of wooded mountains. And that third one, it’s right on top of Rigi. Which is to say, an air vent perched on solid rock – or what was once solid rock, anyway.

And then there’s stuff like this. It’s not my photo – it’s by an artist named Leo Fabrizio. He’s taken a book’s worth of pictures of this stuff, and I filched this one from the July ’06 issue of a really interesting webzine called Polar Inertia. Go there for more – there are plenty, and they’re crazy good.

Alright then. Time to pack.

 

hello from the future

First of all, don’t tell Mia it’s 2007, not until at least this evening. She was all excited to stay up until midnight, but her eyes glazed over and her spine went all boneless and we sent her to bed around 8:30 with a fever. But we promised her – promised – that we’d finish New Year’s Eve tomorrow, that in fact it was a two-part affair, and that tonight was just a prelude. She bought it, and anyone who tells her otherwise is in big trouble.

Sarah doesn’t have a fever, but she followed Mia off to bed a couple hours later, though no deception was involved. I, on the other hand, poured a glass of champagne and a bowl full of peanuts and took up residence on the balcony to see what, if anything, Zug had to offer for Neujahr.

As it turns out, Zug has a lot to offer.

First came the bells. From about a quarter ‘til, the churches started sounding the coming of midnight. One steeple rang out, then another, then two more, and by 11:55, the entire perimeter of Lake Zug and the whole of the valley surrounding it were vibrating with the peals of a hundred church bells, maybe a thousand. Whatever, it was loud. Loud enough to rouse Sarah out of bed and upstairs to my side. And then…

Well, not total silence, but close. Within thirty seconds, the bells stopped ringing, all of them, the last ones rattling to a halt with about a minute left in the day. Then, on the stroke of midnight, the fireworks started with a thick, dull boom over the northern end of the lake. And suddenly, the whole valley was alight with explosions of color, fireworks launched from backyards and front yards and balconies in every direction. The effect was, in Sarah’s apt description, like being in a darkened stadium when everyone starts taking pictures. It was enchanting.

The bells started up again slowly, then more quickly, reaching another crescendo around fifteen minutes after the hour before settling down again. The fireworks, on the other hand, continued unabated for another quarter-hour before they too dissipated, followed closely by a lazy, sulfurous haze, which floated slowly off towards the clouds.

I have no idea how we’re going to re-create all this for Mia.