Category Archives: Narrative

Well hello there. Welcome to my lair on the web. I’m Julia Fackenthall, daughter of Kent and Lyn. Dad calls me ‘Bean’, short for Jellybean. I sure hope he doesn’t keep that up when I have my friends over. They weren’t going to give me a web page at first, saying that I would have a problem with spelling the big words, but if you’ve been following my dad’s web page pursuits over the years, you’ll realize he’s no Miriam Webster either. Once I pointed this out, their defenses were penetrated and I won. It might have also had something to do with the screaming and hollering I did.

Needless to say, here I am. I’m pushing 4 months old now, and let me tell you, I’ve seen some things in my day. I’ll tell you one thing, nobody looks right at 3 in the morning.

These days I spend most of my time sleeping. Or eating. Or hollering to be put to sleep or eat. Actually I spend most of my time looking around, just staring at stuff. Mom and Dad got me some toys, a set of chewable keys (as if keys are really chewable, duh), a squishy ‘8’ shaped thing I can chew on, some Winnie the Pooh (whoever he is) stuffed animals that taste pretty good, and some plastic linking fish that I’m not sure will survive if they keep them out of water much longer. They also got me this sort of kicker thing which is pretty cool, it spins and makes noise and stuff when I look at it, only problem is, when I start to doze off and bump the thing, it scares the daylights out of me. I try to tell them this and they just ask me why I’m hollering. I’m like, I am hollering cause the thing freaked me out! I’d swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think all they heard was holler holler holler.

Mom and Dad are always trying to get me to look into this little grey box and make happy faces but it’s really pretty boring, so I usually just look bored or holler until they put it away and then I get happy again. They also seem to always get the box out whenever they give me a ‘bath’ which I really hate, ’cause I’m all naked and stuff and I’ve really put on the weight in the past few months… I mean the nurse was here the other day to weigh me and I checked in at 13 pounds for crying out loud! I should try some Tai-Bo.

You should have seen Mom freak out the other day. She had just given me one of them ‘bath’ things and had me sitting on my belly on the table. As usual, the stupid grey box was out. I picked myself up on my two arms and she just about lost it. I was only trying to see out the window over the dog’s huge fat head, and you’d think I was performing miracles or something. Needless to say, I’ve got them pegged. Whenever I want to impress them now, all I do is lift my head and smille or make a noise and they freak. They are really pretty easily entertained, plus it fun to watch them scramble for the little box.

They are also very excited now because they have started me on ‘solid food’. I don’t see what’s so solid about this mush, but apparently this is what I have to look forward to. I dunno, though, I see the dumb brown dog eating some stuff that’s crunchy and I’m thinking as soon as I figure out how to move around a bit, I’ll have to help myself to some of that.

Well, I guess that’s about all for now. I don’t have much else to report and there’s some thunder brewing in my pants, so I think it’s time that I draw some attention to myself now…..HEY THESE SHORTS ARE GETTING WET!….That usually works. Check out the pictures of me contained on this page. I don’t really feel that they accurately convey the dynamic that I was trying to acheive at the time, but Mom and Dad think they are ‘cute’. Ugh. My genius is already misunderstood, and at such a young age. Bye.

Here we are with the debut of our new family site, so all of you can see pictures of our new arrival.

But enough about her, dammit. It’s time for us to get some attention for once. If you want to see gooey gaga pictures, check out the Bean’s portion of the site. You can also learn why she’s called the Bean there. If that’s no incentive, I don’t know what is.

By the way, if you think I’m gonna tone it down and behave myself within the bounds of this forum now that I’m a family man, boy are you mistaken. I’ve been sleeping sporadically for the past 4 months, working too much, watching too much mind-numbng tv and I am just cocked and loaded and waiting to go off.

As you can see from the title of this ditty, we are well into the experiment with no end in sight. The Bean and the dog sleep alot though. It must be rough on them.

Lyn seems to be holding up well these days and says that she doesn’t hear the ‘voices’ as much as she did in the beginning. She said that the dog talks to her sometimes though…something about the Son of Sam er something, I think she thinks he’s a Muppet. I myself never heard the voices, as I was too busy swimming in the bottom of a bottle. No matter. She occupies her days taking care of the Bean and is MORE than ready to dish her off by the time I get home from work. She does the best she can though, being as we are socially inept and have yet to make any friends whom we can pawn of the hollering bundle on for awhile. Actually, she is growing and is now rapidly approaching hollering-sack-of-potatoes status.

I continue to work away at my job churning out ever-so-riveting Sears promotional literature. I have fully sold out and am a slave to the man, society, a culture of capitalist consumers, whoever-all I know is that it almost pays the bills. Now if I could only pick 5 right numbers I’d be set for life. I have finally come to grips with the fact that I have become everything that I loathe, but with age comes wisdom and I finally came to realize that there just isn’t many good paying jobs for roadie-poet-philosopher-artists who don’t want to own a car or a television or a phone, unless you decide to follow the Dead on tour. Actually, that sounds pretty apealling right now, are they still touring? Has Jerry risen from the grave yet?

We actually had a nice visit a while back from the Grandparents Fackenthall, which they cut short, no doubt as a result of the fact that we never let them sleep more than 2 hours at a stretch without having a visit form their lovely grand daughter. No-actually I’m kidding, they didn’t leave early, but they seemed oddly happy to be going….

Grandma and Grandpa Mourant have been more than helpful as well too, with frequent visits to make funny faces and weird noises at ‘la petite’, and Lyn actually went home to stay with them for a little while, that is, until they paid her to leave. Hmmm…a potential money making racket for sure.

Actually, I am only kidding of course, but If I just wrote your standard ‘our child is bestest most beautiful child in the whole world’ stuff, it wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining…

Test Subject #1453R485

Well, everything is normal up here in the north. It’s started to get cold already, and by cold for you California types, that means that the average temp each day is right around freezing. The sun still comes out, though I think it’s only for like 2 or three hours a day.

These days I think that North is counting his lucky stars, seeing as how I ran over him the other day. See, I have started to take him with me on short mountain biking rides to help get him some exercize (read: wear him out so I don’t have to pummel him into submission) and he hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet. It’s partly my fault since as a pup, I gave him an old bike tire as a chew toy. I’m sure you know what’s coming next. Usually he chugs along the trail pretty good, sniffing here and there, chasing various unseen, but smelt, vermin into the bush. Invariably though, he suddenly remembers, TIRE, and bolts out of the underbrush to attack one or both of the tires attached to the bike. Almost without fail, it is usually the front one, resulting in a near headon collision if I’m not paying attention. Well the other day, I wasn’t. I can honestly say that I am pretty sure that North had no clue what would happen whne he latched onto the front tire with his jaws, for if he had, I guarantee he wouldn’t have done it.

I can’t really describe the look of surprise on his face after the wheel rolled over his head, let’s just say it was sort of that look a dog gets when you pretend to throw the ball and palm it behind your back. Sort of a combination of stupification and amazment. I know deep down he was thinking to himslef, “Ooo, I hope nobody saw that.” Kind of like when us humans trip over that invisible crack in the sidwalk and go sliding down a busy street like Pete Rose headed for home, and then get up like nothing happens, meanwhile the skin (or lack thereof) on our hands and knees burns like it was on fire.

No, I can happily say that North was not hurt by his little tangle with a pedal driven vehicle. I know that his biggest concern was whether any of his ‘dog buddies’ saw it. Never mind that a bike just rolled over him, you still have to look good.

I myself was caught in that complex mix of emotions that often grip us in situations like these. First the intial concern for the well being of the victim, and second, the need to take in larger quantities of air to aid in the huge volume of laughter being produced. There’s nothing like living through a harrowing experience and coming out with a ‘what the hell just happened’ look on your face to evoke laughter in the observers of said incident.

It reminds me of a time when, on crutches with a bum knee, I fell off the front porch at the Youth Hostel, and, as I lay there I turned to see Lappo holding the door for me, with a laugh on his face, only no sound coming out. He had the classic, ‘I’m laughing so hard, I can’t make any noise’ in full effect – something I thought stopped with 6th grade sleep overs. It was then that I knew that this phenomenon occured in adults as well, although it usually took something on a much grander scale to incite it – usually the misfortune of others, or large amounts of a controlled substance.

I, of course, failed to see the humor in the whole incident until later. Lappo on the other hand, got it right away, and of course from then on, always felt the need to share the humor with others. This I didn’t always appreciate, for it made me the butt of the joke, and I also, as most butts of jokes do, ended up looking like a complete mallethead every time the story was recounted.

So, I guess the point is this, North is a mallethead. Although, I knew this before the run in with the bike, the whole episode just reaffirmed it. I had a hint before when he walked into the sliding glass door, but the run-over was irreversable proof. Of course, I take absolutely no blame for giving him the tire in the first place, for you see, I am a mallethead for having fallen of f the porch.

Maybe next time North will stay out of the way of the bike, but coming from a fellow mallethead, I doubt it.