Man, those must have been the days. Hauling all of your kids out in public, neatly dressed, hair (mostly) combed and needing them all to look the same direction at the same time. Now that I have my own children and have tried anything and everything to get them to look at the DAMN CAMERA I have more of an appreciation for those Sears Portrait Studio photographers. Check out this picture of me, Jason & Sean from what I’m guessing must have been 1979.

Even better is this one (circa 1976). When Jason and I roomed together in college we had a copy of this on our door. How many chins can you count there?

Posted from benaar’s posterous

We had to wake Joel up from a pretty sound sleep this morning. He often protests bedtime but once he’s down he sleeps like a champ. Today it was clear that he was dreaming because the first thing he said was, “I need to go back to the house.”

“What house honey?”

“It was a big house by a sidewalk and with a boy and there was a pinball inside of the house. We need to go there!”

“What kind of pinball was it?”

“It was a Lightning McQueen pinball!” (it should be noted here that there is no such thing as a Lightning McQueen or Cars pinball game, although that would be COOL!)

At this point I kind of smiled at him and got squatted down on my knees so I was on his level. I looked him in the eye and with what I hoped was a kind fatherly smile tried to explain that he was just having a dream. That sometimes when we sleep we see things but we just are imagining them, they aren’t real.

He looked back at me with wide eyes and said, “but it IS real!”

There was a mix of conviction & confusion in his voice that I don’t often hear, something very earnest. Different than the way he’ll tell us with all the authority he can muster that “it IS time to watch a movie” or “we ALWAYS have ice cream”. He was so sure of his visions, his memories that he couldn’t believe that I was telling him they weren’t real.

“It was only a dream honey.”

He put is head down, curled up in my lap and cried.

Parenting is hard.

Posted from benaar’s posterous

I feel like I’m constantly beating myself up about how often (or not often I should say) I post. Whenever I sit down to start writing something I can almost hear myself thinking, “this isn’t really that interesting” or “this picture isn’t even very good” or “is this really worth writing about”?

The truth is, sometimes it’s not.

But then I remember that it’s not really about impressing someone (I don’t even know who) with my amazing writing or incredible photography. There’s plenty of both out there online, and I read & see a lot of it. What it’s really about is having the stories & photos to look back on a month, a year, even a decade from now.

I have an audio recording of me and my brother Jason talking when we were 5 & 2. There may be more, but this is the only one I have. Every time I hear that stuffy-nosed little voice of mine, or Jason’s chirpy A-B-Cs it makes me smile. It’s certainly no work of art, but to me it’s precious… and it’ll be even more precious over time as I can share it with my kids and tell them that little toddler voice they’re hearing is me.

Documenting this stage of our family’s life may seem trivial right now, but it’s a long term investment.

Remember that, self.

Posted from benaar’s posterous

If you’re reading this then you probably got here via my twitter or facebook page and if you’ve been reading either of those things over the past few weeks you probably know that in the last year I’ve developed a distinct affinity for pinball. I was turned back onto the game by my friend and co-worker Paul and between the gameroom at work and the Williams Hall of Fame Collection for Wii I kept my appetite pretty well fed. Eventually though, the desire to own one took root and when all was said and done I ended up with three tables.

I just sold them all.

The thing I love about those old pinball games is the same thing that drives me nuts about them. They require a certain level of care and feeding. Eventually stuff breaks down and needs to be replaced, rewired or swapped out. The “fixer” in me gravitates towards that and even finds it rewarding. However, at the same time there’s this side of me, the sys-admin side that is constantly concerned about if/when the next thing is gonna break. It’s anxiety producing in a way that’s hard to articulate. The games were at the Northwest Pinball & Gameroom Expo last weekend and I found myself kind of cruising by them periodically just to check and make sure that everything was working. Granted there were technicians at the show who were charged with repairing the games but there was a part of me that just couldn’t let it go. I’d see that a light was out or that the targets on a game weren’t behaving properly. I’d get this kind of knot in my stomach & start wondering what’s wrong. “Is it just a burnt out bulb? Is there a snapped solder joint? What if it’s something worse?” Eventually, I’d run over, grab the keys off the keybaord, pull the thing apart and dive into troubleshooting. I couldn’t help myself. It’s in my nature.

When the machines crossed over from being fun games to just another thing I need to fix is when I decided I might need to re-evaluate. This is supposedly what I do for fun and the thing that I find the most fun is actually playing them. So, I sold my three classic games and just put in an order for a brand new Iron Man table, which should be arriving in a couple weeks.

…with a warranty.

I also really enjoy how into pinball Joel is. I took him and Isaac down to the show on Friday morning and a photographer from the Seattle Times followed us around for a bit. Here’s a little slideshow he put together (the boys and I are featured in the second half).

2010 Northwest Pinball and Gameroom Show from Cliff DesPeaux on Vimeo.

Posted from benaar’s posterous