How much does joy cost?

I got home after a pretty productive day at the office. Being taxday and all, Omaha and I had a bit to talk about, but Kouryou-chan kept grabbing ahold of me and begging me to play with her. I looked back on the past couple of days and realized that over the last couple of days I hadn't really played that much with her. She wanted my attention, bad. I promised her that after dinner I would play with her until bedtime.

I made dinner quickly-- Omaha wasn't feeling well, but we had a well-enough stocked pantry that I was able to throw together a tuna casserole in short order. It was quite yummy.

How much does sheer joy cost nowadays? For me, yesterday, it was seven bucks. That's what it cost to run out to the nearby general store and buy a new Nerf bat and ball for Kouryou-chan and spend two whole hours just running around outdoors with her in the back yard. We needed a new one; the old balls had been outside all year and the repeated freeze and thaw cycles that are the depth of Seattle winter had shattered them irreparably.

I would toss the big red ball at her and she'd swing the big red bat, and when she connected she would raise her hands in the air and jump up and down and shout "I did it! I did it! Yay!" When the ball whiffed past her she would giggle incredibly, this bubbly, happy, too amused to speak giggle that sprung out of her like a bottle of Sprite shaken just a little too hard. It was such a great sound.

When it was just too dark to play, so dark we were trying to play by the security spotlight pointed at the rear gate, we headed inside. Kouryou-chan grabbed the camera and began taking pictures of everything, but I got her calmed down enough to go get her clothes off while I drew a bath. She got into the tub and we brushed teeth together, then I gave her the soap, then her toys when that was done. While she played by herself in the tub I cleaned up the kitchen. The bathtub is just down the hall and she's a noisy kid; whenever she got quiet I checked up on her-- only to discover that I'd left the liquid soap in reach and she was "washing" her tub toys, using up a lot of soap in the process.

She climbed out of the tub and let me dry her off, then got her pyjamas. We were soon sitting in bed, reading Hop on Pop and Horton Hears a Who. She read a little from Frog and Toad Are Friends (if you're a parent of young children and don't have this series, for shame! They're amazing stories about the personal and moral values of friendship without the big "this story is about" dizney hammer-- great stuff) and she reads just as fast as Yamaarashi-chan, although her vocabulary needs some work. She went to bed without complaint; she'd gotten enough attention from her grownups that day.

Zappa is a god!

How the hell did I get all the way to being 37 without ever listening to Frank Zappa? I mean, sure, I'd heard Zappa before, a couple of tracks now and then. I've had Sheik Yerbouti on my shelf for years, an impulse buy back when everyone else in college was listening to it back in the late 1980's, but I almost never listened to it. After hearing Bobby Brown Goes Down and Jewish Princess, I kinda thought of him as an intellectual Weird Al, but I never quite grokked what others saw in him.

So this week I've been listening to You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, a live album, and realizing that I've completely missed out on the Zappa experience. He was unimaginably talented personally and his band had such talent, such integration. Listening to him you realize that only Dave Matthews has managedtos put together a popular band quite so good, but Zappa's so clearly have fun, joshing with the audience, feeding their expectations and giving every inch. There isn't a moment of hesitation on the whole CD. When his band gives him a false start he starts laughing and says, "You can't start like that! Try again!" and he's still having fun, and so is the band.

Live Zappa is like good sex. The band came to play; the audience came to listen. Both sides knew what they were there for and there are no illusions, no grandstanding, no superstar tantrums. Zappa knew he was good; he knew his band was quality; the audience knows it too. There's enormous respect on all sides, and I just admire a man and a band that respects its audience so well, instead of being there for the cash and the promotion, which is so clearly the case with most talent.