For the last month, I've thrown almost all of my energy into work-related stuff. Yes, that goes against my creed of "work is not your identity", but it goes great with my philosophy of "uh, yeah, you need to make money..." Unfortunately, that's left practically no time, and no energy when the time does come, for things that I want to do.
That's why I'm writing this at 6 AM. At some juncture I'll start trying to write what I set out to write about.
grumble grumble...no coffee...grumble grumble...don't wanna make it myself...
We did take a nice trip down to the Texas Hill country to stay in an absolutely huge mansion. It is owned by the family of our friends, and they invited us to go out of town with them while the kids were on spring break. We got there at night and walked in and I couldn't believe it. Not sure how many bedrooms, but two different staircases (one of which Ryan fell down very hard), a private library, a boat house, and at leat a hundred oak trees on the huge, manicured lawn. One night we pulled into the driveway and there were about a dozen deer lying in the front yard. The boys slinked out of the car with their newly acquired pop guns and stalked up on them, startling them when they pulled the trigger. The poor deer had to abandon their beds and flee. The kitchen itself was as big as my first apartment. It must be very lovely to live in a mansion.
From that base of operations, which I didn't really want to leave at any point, we ventured down to Enchanted Rock in Fredericksburg. The weather was beautiful--about 70 degrees, and we climbed this huge granite rock, which is about 1800 feet in elevation. It's a steep climb, so I was afraid that Ryan, being cavalier like 8-year-olds tend to be, might slip and fall all the way down. I guess it got my blood pressure up. It didn't help that his friend, who is also 8 and was also with us, refused to obey his dad and kept running ahead and doing risky things like jumping in slick pools of water on the surface, and scrambling up the steepest parts of the rock, or sliding down dips in the surface-he was out of control.
I had to pull Ryan aside and give him the "I can't control your obnoxious buddy (who is destined to an early death at this rate, or at least prison), but you are going to have to listen to me" speech. He took it pretty well, and I made sure to let him go off by himself as soon as we were finished with the dangerous part.
We got to the top, and everyone was looking for the mouth of a cave which goes through the rock. I don't know who thinks it would be fun to lower themself into a dark, dank opening with
bats inside (yes, we saw one--and I took a picture), but I get clausterphobic sometimes when I'm sitting in an armchair, and I wasn't having anything to do with that. Besides, this "cave" didn't look too official or anything--just a faint, light-blue arrow spray-painted years ago pointing toward the entrance, which was so obscure that I was afraid that Ryan was trying to drop down into a crevasse between random rocks. Plus, we only had one flashlight for four people. 
Eventually, they gave up trying to pull me down into the rockpile and we climbed to the summit. One cave explorer came back to report that the floor had standing water (he was soaked to the bone) and that at many points he had to crawl on his belly through the cave (Mike--out!) and that there's no way we should go down there with just one flashlight with aging battery between us. I offered up a placating, "Well, it gives us something to do next time"...
The behavior of Ryan's friend (I'll call him Calvin) during the trip was driving me a little crazy. His parents are older than we are, and I think they have just run out of energy and/or desire to control him. Sometimes he acts so monstrous that we can't believe it, and we've had several conversations about how this may not be the best thing for Ryan. Fran calls it the "Frat Boy" behavior--one of his endearing qualities is that he often turns his nose up at other people's suggestions or stories or activities. If there is a group of kids playing, he sometimes incites the other kids to "gang up" on and exclude someone (not usually Ryan, but I still hate that kind of stuff).
One of the main issues is that this kid refuses to allow Ryan to win anything. Ryan has a certain kindness and sweetness to his attitude that lets him put up with this--we often get compliments on nice things that Ryan is doing for other people. He's a straight-A student and never gives us problems, and he's certainly no pushover, but his friend is relentless...if they are playing soccer, Calvin, who is extremely atheletic, won't cease to attack him until he gets the ball away.
This puts me in the dilemma of: Should I ask Calvin to tone it down and play nice when they are competing? It makes me feel like I am asking him to go easy on Ryan (Ryan is very atheletic, but Calvin is really just a superstar athelete, which his dad is very proud of and encourages).
I was throwing the football to them, and, when it was Calvin's turn to catch the ball, he caught it. When it was Ryan's turn, Calvin either rushed in at the last moment to catch it, or he would knock it out of the air so Ryan couldn't catch it. Finally, when Ryan broke away and managed to catch one without being disrupted, Calvin chased Ryan across the yard, knocked him down, and shoved his face in the grass. Ryan was so frustrated he started to cry.
I don't see much good in going over this issue with Calvin's parents again--they are aware of these issues, and have expressed frustration about his behavior, as well as told us about criticism from other people. They just don't have the guts to put the kid in his place (which I find to be incredible, but what do I know?)
On the last day of the trip, Calvin pushed me to my limit. We were eating lunch at a restaurant and he kicked me under the table--he wasn't even sitting across from me directly, but was to my front and right. I let it go about five different times, then I asked him very nicely to please be careful of where his feet were. I don't know if he was embarrassed or what, but he began to intermittently kick me under the table for the next ten minutes--he probably kicked me thirty times! Finally, I reached my hand under the table and tried to grab his foot very subtly, but I couldn't reach him. His mother was sitting across from me and noticed that he was doing it and kept saying "Calvin, stop it now..."
At last, I had enough. I pointed across the table, looked him in the eye and said very sternly (imagine a drill sergeant): "Calvin! DO NOT KICK ME ONE MORE TIME! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!". He didn't, but I felt like an ogre for letting the little brat get under my skin, and I resented his parents a little for making me be the bad guy. And I felt a little guilty since we were there as their guests at the beautiful mansion.
The rest of the trip was very nice. Along the highways in Texas during the springtime you can see fields of wildflowers such as bluebonnets and indian paintbrushes. The sky was a beautiful, denim blue and we tackled our 200-mile trip (each way) with gusto--the kids sat quietly watching a movie in the back of the van, and traffic was light. We even let Calvin ride home with us part of the way, and he behaved well. Fran and I are still talking about what, if anything, we should do to help keep Ryan from being negatively influenced, but he insists that Calvin is his best friend, and we won't break that up.
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