Okay, I wasn’t going to write this one. Really. I was going to honor my wife’s request not to devote a blog post to her feelings about the new dog. But, for reasons that will become obvious once you’ve read this, I just couldn’t resist. If you’re reading this, honey, please know that it comes purely from a place of love.

Yesterday morning J. looked at me with a serious expression on her face – the kind you don’t want to see on your spouse. She then said the words you don’t want to hear your spouse say: “There’s something I need to tell you.”

As my heart sank, I tried to think of what I might be in trouble for. I came up empty.

“What is it?” I asked, bracing myself.

Her face changed then, as an ironic smile appeared, and she declared, “I think I’m in love with the dog.”

I’m thrilled with this, of course. The responsibility of finding a dog that would be a good fit with our family and the variety of personality types the four of us represent fell squarely on my shoulders. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, but it hasn’t happened yet. She hasn’t given us any reason to pause. (No pun intended.)

It was a rare moment when I got J. to admit that I was right: I had predicted, during our first conversation about dog ownership, or the prospect of it, that the dog would seek her out, and become her dog and that she would fall in love.

Sure enough, Ally follows her everywhere, and J. speaks to her in a sing-song voice, rivaled only by her Spanish baby-talk that still melts Jackson’s rebel heart.

She says things like, “I love her eyes. She has such pretty eyes.” And Ally just sits there, back end wiggling, tail wagging, basking in all the love.

“There’s something about the unconditional love of a dog,” I say, never passing up a platitude, “that’s very disarming.”

As I mentioned, I wasn’t going to write this post. However I realized I really had to when Jeanette came by my job at lunchtime today, talking about how she’d been discussing Ally with some friends at her former office. “I showed them a picture of her,” she said, taking out her iPhone.

“You didn’t make it your home screen picture, did you?” I asked.

She paused, and then smiled. “I did,” she admitted.

And with that, my decision was made. Honey, this blog’s for you.

… but that being said…

It’s official: we are now a family of five. Our newest member, Ally, joined us yesterday evening when I signed the adoption papers at the Town Lake Animal Center.

This morning has gone pretty much as I predicted it would, with a walk, and now with me sitting at my writing table in my home office, Ally lying down at my feet.

I went back to the shelter yesterday after work and filled out Ally’s paperwork, before they walked her slowly out to me. I had the Corolla cooling and she calmly hopped right in and got comfortable as I made my way onto I35 for the trafficky ride northeast to Manor.

I’ve been watching her closely ever since, and she’s a bit groggy — not quite the same animal she was before her spay surgery earlier in the day. On medication, she’s a little bit out of it and low energy. What I see so far is a loyal, friendly dog who is highly obedient and in need of love.

Every once in a while yesterday evening I would catch J. grinning at me. “You’re so happy,” she said more than once. And the fact is she’s right. I’m right there with Jackson, overjoyed that Ally is with us.

J. also pointed out that Ally knew me, or seemed to, and that she perked up and wagged her tail whenever she saw me. This is obviously flattering for me, despite all that’s been said about being loved by dogs who are, by nature, “love machines,” as opposed to being loved by cats, say, who are much more selective.

It may be that she associates me with her newly found freedom, or perhaps I’m an animal person and she can sense it. Whatever the case may be, Ally has clearly decided she’s my dog, which is just fine by me.

I’m a little concerned about leaving her alone today and she’ll need to be in her crate. Otherwise, I’m afraid we may come home to a chewed-up house. Also, I’m a little worried that she’ll chew at her surgery site while left alone in her cage.

Last night, Ally sought out the comforting sound of Diego’s snoring, and I found her sleeping in between the two boys’ beds when I got up this morning at around five. I took her out in the back yard, then for a short walk over to the trails. Her walks need to be short these first ten days after her surgery. I really enjoyed walking her, and it’s going to be a nice new routine for me. I’ll miss riding my bike, but I can maybe do that at other times of the day, especially now that the weather is going to start cooling down. (Please, oh please.) Maybe I could find time to do my bike ride, and walk Ally.

We’re here in San Antonio, our little family, staying at the Doubletree Downtown Hotel, sleeping in two queen-size beds and having a good time of it. The kids get so excited by the novelty of staying in a hotel room and swimming in the hotel pool. It brings back nice memories for me, probably from when Mike and I were their age and younger.

It’s humbling to think that we’re making memories today that will still be in their heads 40 years from now. More importantly, we’re forming the people they’re going to be in the way we respond to their behavior. By setting limits for them, we’re helping them set limits for themselves later. They understand that actions have consequences, and that this is a part of life. As a parent, this is one of the most important duties we perform.

I’m currently sitting outside at a table beside the little pool, where there’s a nice breeze blowing in. Someone’s cigarette smoke is wafting over, and the dreamy sound of a train’s horn comes into my consciousness from somewhere in the distance. Just in case James Lipton never asks me, I’ll say that a sound or noise I love is the distant wail of a train, cutting across the landscape.

So I’m trying to recall some good hotel memories from my youth. As a young boy there was Little Rock, where I remember the pool and my dad meeting a childhood hero — Brooklyn Dodger Joe “Ducky” Medwick. I also remember delicious deep-fried glazed donuts oozing with scrumptious fat and sugar. My mother waters as I think back on them.

I remember the Hotel Santo Domingo and being blown away by the omelets there. They made them so quickly and so perfectly. And of course, as always, I remember enjoying the pool. I got to return to the Santo Domingo for my brother-in-law’s wedding in 2003 and then in ’07, when we took our own kids to that very same pool where I swam years earlier.

I don’t recall which hotel it was, but we had an amazing stay in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, where my father had some kind of work retreat. The hotel was right on the beach, and we spent a lot of time there. This is the hotel where the infamous Myers’s Rum incident occurred.

As an adult I’ve had some great hotel experiences, as well. Monasterio de Piedra in Spain was special — an old converted monastery with four-star dining. The St. Regis, our wedding night, complete with butler service and a view overlooking Central Park — an incentive after 911. (We’d never have been able to afford such luxury otherwise.)

Perhaps my favorite hotel was one of the more rustic ones — the little raised hut we stayed at on Arawak Beach in Anguilla, Virgin Islands. That was an unbelievable trip. Sunset at Smitty’s where you get “a whale of a deal for your meal.”

I got home from a three-day business trip last night, right around dinner time, and Jackson greeted me at the door with his usual level of excitement, yelling, “DADDY!” and throwing himself into my arms. Diego, on the other hand, sat at the dinner table, munching on a snack, and did not move a muscle, despite Jackson telling him, over and over, “Diego, Daddy’s home!” Diego just sat there, staring straight ahead.

“I was pretending to be a statue,” he explained. He smiled then; it had been a joke in his mind, but it had visibly shaken Jackson, and it troubled me a little as well.

Thinking on it now, it’s the difference between them in microcosm – a perfect laboratory specimen of their emotional profiles. On the one hand there’s Jackson, who wears every emotion on his sleeve, as they say. He feels his feelings to the extreme. When he’s happy his daddy is home, he lets anyone and everyone know it, smothering me in hugs and kisses, and when he’s upset at having to sleep alone in his bed (for example) he is screaming and crying almost to the point of hyperventilation. There is never any mystery as to what’s going on with Jackson.

Diego is no less sensitive; in fact, he’s probably more sensitive than his little brother. It will take a trained and careful eye to be aware of what he’s going through at any given time. We are usually pretty good at reading him, because we’ve known him for as long as we have, and he probably shows us more than he shows others. In other settings, like school, for example, he is already flying under the radar. His teachers give us comments like “Diego’s such a good kid. He never causes any trouble.”

Jackson is more of a celebrity in the hallways of Manor Elementary. People say things like, “Oh, you’re Jackson’s dad. Yeah, I know him. Funny kid!” From the moment he set foot in the school, Jackson was determined to know (and be known by) every person there. They’ve already decided that he and his best friend Travis must never be in class together again.

According to J., Diego is just like her when she was a child. She too was an emotionally guarded kid with a lot going on under the quiet surface. As a result, she’s very careful to check in with Diego periodically and to make sure he’s doing all right.

I’d like to say I was just like Jackson when I was six, but I was never as confident as he is. Any “swagger” I may have developed came later – like in college, maybe, and it was a forced, false swagger, masking a great deal of insecurity I’d always carried around with me.

Jackson’s swagger is real and comes completely naturally to him. It’s quite something to see. As his parent, my job is to make sure he uses his extreme confidence for the purposes of good and not evil.

It was my third time at Rangers Ballpark and despite a game-time temperature of 97 degrees, there was a breeze that made for a comfortable evening. Good baseball weather. Certainly it was much better than the last time I was there, when the stadium had to be evacuated due to nearby tornadoes.

I stayed for the entire game, and it was a good one, with plenty of offense and a few defensive gems. Josh Hamilton provided one of each, with a screaming line-drive home run over the right field fence, and an inning-ending, sliding catch in center field. His was one of three round-trippers, so the game provided plenty of drama.

At one point, early on in the game, I became aware of the fact that directly below and in front of me sat former president George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. They were seated in the owner’s box, one row behind the Rangers on-deck circle, along with Nolan Ryan and his wife. The sight of Bush there, 50 yards or so away, was jarring somehow, giving rise to a whole variety of notions.

My first inclination was to see if I could spot the Secret Service agents that surely must be all around him. Apart from one guy, dressed just like the rest of us, in Rangers regalia, who was visibly watching the crowd and not the game, I couldn’t spot anyone. I then thought back to my entry into the stadium. There were two lines – one for people with bags and one for people without. Those who went in the former were carefully searched, including a pat-down. I, on the other hand, walked straight to the ticket taker, who welcomed me in as she scanned my ticket.

Again, there may have been people of whom I was unaware watching me as I came in. But as I sat there in my perch I thought about how easy it would have been for me, had I had any bad intentions toward the former POTUS. I also considered whether or not I and everyone else sitting behind the president, had been thoroughly checked out the moment our credit cards went into the Texas Rangers system. I wonder if this very post might show up as a red flag the next time I buy a Rangers ticket.

Okay, I’m slipping into paranoia now. The stuff of movies. Mainly what I thought of as I looked down at the back of their heads was money. They exuded wealth and comfort. I could smell it from where I sat. These were people who didn’t have to do much for themselves. Somewhere in the bowels of this building was a driver smoking a cigarette outside an unassuming Chevy Suburban, waiting for the 7^th or 8^th inning, when the Bushes would make their way inconspicuously down the VIP tunnel.

I’m not sure where Crawford, Texas is, but that’s where they drive to their Home on the Range. Maybe they discuss the highlights and lowlights of the game. Maybe they watch the rest of it on satellite television. Maybe they discuss an upcoming speaking engagement, or maybe they sit in silence, watching the scenery rush past.

I am considering going to see “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” today, but I think it may have to wait until another day. The star of the movie, James Franco, appeared on Conan’s show last night to promote it, and Conan once again proved himself to be my perfect celebrity stand-in. He and I are the same age, and have similar off-beat senses of humor. He confessed that as a child he was heavily into the “Planet of the Apes” films.

“So you were a nerd,” Franco said.

“I was a nerd,” admitted Conan.

So was I. I owned the action figures. I wore a geeky ape mask for Halloween. (Okay, not just for Halloween. I wore it a lot.) I lived for “Ape Week” on ABC’s 4:30 Movie, and would rush home from school each day. Monday: “Planet of the Apes,” with Charlton Heston as Taylor, the misanthrope turned Human Freedom Fighter. Tuesday: “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” the cautionary, Cold War tale of humankind’s propensity for self-annihilation. Wednesday: “Escape from the Planet of the Apes,” the campiest of these campy flicks, which had Cornelius and Zira landing Taylor’s repaired spacecraft in 1973 New York. Thursday: “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes,” the revolutionary ape movie, in which racial politics of the time are mirrored by, and play themselves out via three species of apes: chimps, gorillas and orangutans. On Friday it capped off with “Battle for the Planet of the Apes,” in which Caesar and the apes must hold back a human uprising, all the while resisting their own corruption and their growing inter-species “racism.”

Tim Burton’s 2001 re-boot was fun, and the makeup was an improvement on the 70’s series. It was also a return to camp, in a sense; like most Tim Burton films, it never took itself too seriously. This new one employs the use of motion-capture technology and tells a brand new story.

Wow, I just re-read this post. Turns out I’m still an ape nerd. Who knew?

(I did.)

“ROCK ON,” states the Pepsi banner adorning the little stage at the “Asleep at the Wheel Roadhouse” at the Austin Bergstrom International Airport, where I have become a regular monthly commuter, since taking my job as Education Specialist at Region 13 in January of last year. I feel a great deal of responsibility in this job – to the students in the school I serve, their teachers and principals, not to mention their parents. We send our kids to school every day with a silent prayer, playing it on a loop inside our worried minds: “Please let this be a good experience for them. Please let them learn.”

Schools can really make you sad if you think about them in a certain way. Consider the first day of Kindergarten – all those five year olds come in, nervously clinging to their parents’ pant legs. But there’s also a sense of sheer excitement, of wanting to conquer the unknown, wanting to know new people your own age, wanting to learn new things.

Now consider the first day of teaching. For those of you who have never experienced it, I’ve done my best to describe my own first day in a previous post. In short, it’s that mix of nerves and excitement, just like Kindergarten.

I was fortunate to spend the majority of my educational career (about twelve and a half of the nearly twenty years so far) working in an extraordinary school where we managed to sustain that sense of excitement and nervous, fun energy for years. I’ve realized, in my travels to schools all around New York City and now Texas, that this by no means represents the norm. There are few things more disheartening than being in a school where that sense of joyful excitement has given way to abject boredom and drudgery.

I’m not saying my school was by any means perfect. We had some wonderful teachers and classes, but I wonder if we pushed our students hard enough; I think we could have challenged them more. Academically, I mean. On the social/emotional side of things, we were red hot. When our advisory program was firing on all cylinders, we were a sight to behold. In my next school job – whatever, and whenever, it may be – I’d like to see us use that great caring for our children as a lever with which we can build up the rigor of their intellectual work. It’s tough not to talk about this stuff in platitudes and tired “edu-speak” truisms. We can talk about “engaging” our students with “rigorous” work, but what does that mean? What does it look like?

For me it’s about aspirations and skills. If we can get our students excited about coming to school, get them feeling safe in our building, and get them to trust the adults and each other, then they will begin to share their dreams and vision. As adults, it’s our job to know to know each child, as well as his or her dream. If you’re a good teacher, you nourish that dream, and yes, to anticipate your next question, you nourish even the dreams you may perceive as unlikely – the boy who is 4’11” and 85 pounds who wants to be Lebron James, or the girl who is 5’9” and 200 pounds who wants to be a ballerina. Yes, I know, I know – you’re doing them a favor by helping them be realistic, or so you think.

School is a place where one should be allowed and encouraged to dream. And here’s something that may help you feed those unlikely dreams: If a child feels you’re helping him realize his dreams, he’s much more likely to help you to fulfill yours – namely, to open his mind to the joys of learning.

Last Saturday night I headed over to the Flying Saucer at the Triangle and met up with my friends Neil and Stephen. Despite being on antibiotics, and essentially unable to drink any of the many tasty beers they sell there, I was able to enjoy my sodas while chatting with them about a number of things. It was a good, easy time.

At one point a man stopped our waitress and informed her of his wish to send a drink over to the “man in uniform,” a young soldier in full camouflage desert fatigues who sat on one of the sofas by himself, under lamplight, flipping through a book and sipping a pint of beer. He looked so serene sitting there. I wondered how he could concentrate on reading with all the activity swirling around him, until something occurred to me. If he were a combat veteran of one of our two ridiculous wars and not simply an employee stationed at Camp Mabry a couple of miles away, a loud and clamorous peace may be the only kind that makes any sense to one who has seen what this young man is likely to have seen.