Turkey is as turkey does.

Yesterday, I painted the bathroom for Thanksgiving. Not with leaves and pilgrim hats, but I repainted the wainscoting because I didn't want my guests to use a bathroom with anything short of the whitest white walls.

So today, here I am, polishing and spit-shining in between cooking side dishes. Because that is what Thanksgiving is all about, right? The least dusty lampshades and whitest bathroom walls. I need to step back and take stock. I've lost sight of something here...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! From a real turkey.

34 Days and Counting...

The kids have been getting antsy about their visit from the "Big Man" on Xmas Eve. We've heard their hushed conversations about what to ask for, their chances of getting stockings full of coal, we've even shot down Maddie's sly plan to get herself a cell phone - Bypass Mom and Dad and just go straight to Santa (won't work because we'll just talk to Santa ourselves - as grownups, our wishes trump her wishes).

But I had a very interesting conversation with Parker last night regarding his belief in Santa. It wasn't so much that he didn't believe in him as much as it was that he didn't know if he could get behind him still, knowing what he knows.

The conversation went like this:
"Mom, you know Santa?"
"Yeah?"
"How fat is he?"
"Um..."
"Why does he smoke?"
"Wha-?"
"What if I was Santa?"
"What do you mean?"
"If I were Santa, I'd be a good one. Santa, I've heard in some stories, smokes a pipe. And he's fat, too. I can show you." Then he grabs a copy of 'Twas The Night Before Christmas and asks me to read it out loud. He nods and elbows me conspiratorially when I read the passages about him being plump, the bowl full of jelly reference and the smoke encircling his head like a wreath.
"See, Mom. He needs to be healthier. If he didn't smoke and eat so many cookies. If I were Santa, I would never smoke, Mom. But I probably would eat the cookies... But not ALL of them."
"Okay."
"I'm just worried about him."

I can now only imagine what our trip to visit Santa will be like this year. Maddie slipping Cingular ads into his pockets and Parker giving him a physical. Let's hope he doesn't have cavities, that could open a whole new can of worms.

Please Watch. Please Think About It. Please Pass It On!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhDRVKDcXQo

It's truly our chance to change the world. Pay attention. We all count.

Family...

Somehow, at some point in my life I must have done something right because I get to laugh and smile with these faces everyday (well, 3 out of 5 of them...).
Everyday!
I am an incredibly lucky, lucky woman.

I Heart Jon Stewart!

'Nuff said.

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=184086

If you're not enraged...

Do the Republicans really think that all they have to do to win the female vote is to throw a woman into the race regardless of her ideologies?

As a woman, do you think I am so misinformed and single-minded that all you have to do is throw another chick in the mix and you'll have our support? Have you paid so little attention that you think that is all that mattered to us?

I am insulted and disgusted.

Where has all the summer gone?

I can tell by my posting frequency that I've been busy, but I where has it gone?

Tonight we find out who the kids' teachers will be for the upcoming year. They are very excited, anxious and ready to see their friends again. I am excited to see how they do, especially Parker. Being gone all day is going to be a big transition for him. He's our guy that swears he's never going to move out of the house and doesn't want to be married because he thinks he'll have to get his own place. He did once say that he would "get a wife" if she would live next door and he wouldn't have to share his room.

Now I have to share both of them for the whole day. It has been a good summer. The kids have their typical fights, but have by and large, been great and reminded me why I am home with them. I wouldn't miss a minute.

Four more days and back to it... Wish us luck!

In a moment of puppy-induced insanity...

Are we crazy? Is it like labor, how they say you forget the pain and that is the only reason you do it again? Is it the puppy breath? Or the over sized paws she kept tripping over? Maybe the layers of extra skin under that soft fur?

Whatever it was, it worked because we brought home an 8 week old Chocolate lab this week. We named her Harley - I suppose in homage to the bike Eric doesn't have yet. Somehow, naming her Honda after his current ride never came up...

So yes, here were are in the throes of insanity, kennel training and living with this animal that we are fairly certain would eat us alive if we didn't physically remove our extremities from her mouth.

But, man, she's so cute...

Oh so close!

The good luck kisses didn't work this time...

In the last regular season game, Eric finally did what every adult dreads when they join a sports team - Blew out his knee. Meniscus. It will be a few weeks before he can have surgery and is supposed to be on crutches until then. But do you think he'll use them? Hasn't stopped him from assistant coaching Parker's football team, coaching a fastpitch camp and riding his motorcycle every day.

Best part? We're SURPRISING the kids with a trip to Disneyland next weekend. Eric came home from his Dr. appointment with this announcement:

"Good news and bad news. Bad news is I need surgery. Good news is, I've got a disabled pass to Disneyland."

Find the silver lining where you can, right?

It's not slow-pitch!

Eric braved his first double-header yesterday in 90 degree heat. It was a long and hot day under all that gear, but he hung in there and only got out from behind the dish for 3 innings. Those were spent in left field, but we won't talk about that. It wasn't pretty and justified his rule #3 in the "Loveriches Don't" list that is constantly being recited to the kids. (Example: Rule #1 Loveriches don't bunt.) Someday we'll have coaches thanking us for instilling such un-coachability in them. Sorry coach, Dad says I can't bunt, play right field, etc... In his defense, "Loveriches don't quit" is #2. And speaking of, check out the souvenir Eric came home with. I went to pat his back after the game and found a half-baseball sized knot inside his right shoulder blade. He'd taken a fastball there early in the 2nd game. "Did it leave a mark?" he asked? I'd say!

Secrets revealed!!!

I had a friend ask me out-of-the-blue this weekend, "What is your secret?"

Secret what? Identity? Antiperspirant? But seeing the way she waited for my answer, I realized she was giving me what I considered the ultimate compliment. Most of you who know me, know that I am not one to spout off relationship advice or blah-blah about my marriage, but I am proud of us, so having someone recognize that... Well, it was nice.

I told her what I believe to be true - Eric and I have seen each other through a lot of "stuff". All of that created a really strong base. It is a base that will either catch you when you fall, provide a jumping point for us or a home to return to if we've gotten off track.

As I mulled it over this week, I found a few more:

Don't forget how you started. We weren't always waving from separate cars on the highway as we darted kids to different practices and functions.

Honesty (I know, generic and obvious). Not just on the big things, but even, "You know when you (whatever)? That pissed me off." Then try to work it out.

On that same note, be able to apologize. I am not the best at this, but I know I'm better than I used to be. That leads me to my last "secret."

Evolve. None of these may apply in a week. The secret is to be ready for anything and for nothing to look like you thought it would. Trying to plan ahead for emotional experiences is ridiculous.

So that's what I've got, right now. Anyone got a better secret I could pass on?

I left my heart in Lilliwaup

*As a writer, I was always taught to remove myself from my subject so as to avoid sappy, over-emotional pieces. Sorry. No can do this time. Proceed carefully, this has the potential to go knee deep.

Sleepaway camp seemed like such a great idea in the doldrums of Winter when Maddie and Parker were fighting like cats and dogs, it was pouring rain outside, we'd played 'Sorry' innumerable times, seen every episode of Hannah Montana and our waistlines couldn't stand another cookie-baking-and-decorating activity.

But we dropped Maddie off Sunday for 4 days and 3 nights of Girl Scouting adventure in a picturesque spot at the foot of the Hood Canal - Camp Robbinswold.

The past few days find me attached to my cellphone and when home, toting around that phone, too. I am a wreck! Nighttime has been the worst for all of us. Parker looks out the window and says a prayer for Maddie's safety, Eric and I can't even talk about it, we get lost in books or ESPN and hope to drift off to sleep.

I'm better than day one, where I cried at any mention of Maddie, daughters, Moms, camping, college... You can imagine how fun I was to be around, especially since the house is testosterone central this week. I know this is just the first of many, many, independent adventures for her. We are all looking forward to hearing her stories and seeing her pictures and just having her light in our house again.

As we left, I heard an exchange that I've been replaying all week. She introduced herself to a girl that was there alone (most campers came in pairs): "Hi. I'm Maddie, this is my friend Amy. You should bunk with us. It's going to be awesome!"

You REALLY should write these down...

Somehow, I've ended up with kids that say and do some of the most outrageous things - even on the scale of kidspeak. Sometimes I think Art Linkletter could have saved himself a lot of time and just come to hang out with Maddie and Parker.

So, the latest experience that has me shaking my head and wondering what I've done to karma happened yesterday at the public swimming pool in front of about 50 parents.

Parker, who has been taking swimming lessons for THREE years now, has just this week decided that he is terrified of the water. Day one of lessons was alright, a little panic, but still had a kickboard to hang on to as he made his way across the pool. After class that day, he grabbed his towel, stood in front of Eric and I and announced, "No kickboards tomorrow. I'm probably just going to drown." (NOTE: He can swim - he has been for 2 summers now. He's forgotten this.)

So after enjoying his "last meal" (a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats), we headed off to his execution. Parker jumped in the pool and immediately popped back up to tell me he wasn't feeling well. "You can do it!" I encouraged from the full bleachers. And he started out. He made it 90% of the way across, literally one of his own body lengths away from the other side, began treading water and yelling that he was drowning(his head never went under water). His teacher shoved him to the wall and he climbed out. Because of the screaming and thrashing, we had the attention of the entire audience.

I pulled out every parenting theory I'd ever heard about. I sat on the deck, hugged, encouraged, cooed at, coaxed, threatened, grounded, everything short of beating him and throwing him back in. All to no avail. So we headed back to sit and watch his class and I told him he was going to have to call his Dad and tell him what happened, this he found the most upsetting. Here we stood in front of the aforementioned full bleachers and Parker began to scream -

"You don't care about me! You want me to die in the pool! You don't care about me at all! You wish I was dead! You don't even love me. You would be happy if I drowned!"

So I've been found out. I had a son just so I could have him killed in the community pool.

As you can imagine, I received SOOO much helpful advice from several parents in the stands and filthy, dirty looks from several others.

Does anyone know when the ballots are available for Mother Of The Year?

NPR: Walking in the Light

Paul Thorne wrote this essay and read it last Sunday on the NPR program Walking in the Light. Here's link to the essay, but I encourage everyone to listen to it in his voice.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91740464

75 Days... not that I'm counting

We officially have 3rd and 1st graders! Maddie and Parker finished up their school years yesterday.

It is only the first day, but I am wondering if we've made a mistake planning our family vacation for the Fall...

We will get into a groove, I just hope it isn't a rut of arguments and sibling bickering followed by me screaming at the children and kicking them out of the house. Who's with me? Anyone? No?

September 3rd, here we come!

It was colder in Siberia...

YESTERDAY!!! Yup. 56 here, 61 there. How much of this can we endure? It's such a long, cold Spring, I keep wondering if we can go back and accept that Maryland job... It's mid-June and we still have the hot tub turned up over 100, and it's too cold!

What keeps us going is Eric's reignited baseball "career". Yes, Eric and yes, hardball. He joined the Liberty Bay Pirates this year. It's a national league for 18-50 year old men who don't want to play slow pitch. They've got wood bats and throw-back unis. We've outfitted ourselves with catcher's gear a go-go and he's out there recapturing age 18 again... Maybe with a few more aches and pains, but having fun none the less.

As a matter of fact, they had their first game this weekend and beat the South Kitsap Reds 11-2! Eric, solid as ever, went 3-5 with 2 singles(one was technically an error, but who's technical?) and a double. Fun to watch, fun to see him having such a blast.

He keeps telling me how good it feels to get out there again. Finally, he convinced me to take some batting practice off the machine. Now, it's been 15 years since I've done this. My ever-patient son sat at shortstop loudly whispering, "Strike 8... Strike 9..." Before I told him to shut up. Pathetically, it took me at least a dozen pitches to just tick one off. But then, I did. The first few were grounders that could have been fielded by any SS over 4 1/2 feet tall, luckily we didn't have one of those.

At one point, the kids were talking out in centerfield and I hit one squarely at them and (formerly) secretly took great joy in yelling out, "HEADS!" Then I had a flash back to these babies that I carried and cooed over, protected from all things scary or dangerous, and here I was hitting hardballs at their heads with an aluminum bat. Know what? One week later, still kinda funny. As a side note, always good to let your kids know you have tricks up your sleeve that they would never have imagined. They knew I'd played at some point in my looong life (but who cares what she did before we were born?) but had never seen it. Anyway, it gave me a touch of legitimacy when I boss them around. And it felt good.

Pirates game #2 this Saturday at Snider Park (where the kids play and I used to go watch Eric when we were first dating.) Talk about your trip down memory lane. Wish them luck and loose hamstrings.

Lessons from Parker

Parker is about a week out of his baseball season and has moved on to being Eric's team's official batboy. Whatever it takes to make the next 9 months pass between seasons. He get to attend his first baseball camp this summer with a group of team buddies from this year and last. He's jazzed beyond belief!

Our boy batted a .791 on the season with only 2 strikeouts in 43 at bats! As excited as Eric is by this number, I feel the wet blanket side of my personality rising up to wonder how long a kid can keep that up? No. No. No. The right response is that he'll only continue to improve, right? :)

He had a lot of fun this year, regardless of wins or losses. It was a lot of fun to watch because on our team, we tended to get a little caught up in scores and wins. But Parker never really cared about that. He celebrated great plays, by both himself and his team equally. He loved a good solid hit, a fast run. He probably walked away from 75% of the games asking, "Did we win? It felt like we won." Not that it mattered. Pretty great attitude, not just for the ball field either...

The Aisle Not Taken

I ran into a friend yesterday that I hadn't seen in a couple of years. We were very close in high school. We used to have the best time together.

But yesterday, here I was in the grocery store after picking Maddie up from school. Parker had just woken from a nap and I had carried him, shoeless, out to the car. Maddie was looking particularly haggard due to PE and I had just finished mowing the lawn (hadn't changed, blades of grass still stuck to my feet). Isn't this always when you run into someone you haven't seen in a while?

Anyway, she is living this very cool, nomadic sort of life - flying off to find jobs around the world, wherever the mood strikes. She had just returned from one such jaunt and was planning on leaving again in a week or so.

I looked at my cart full of children, fruit snacks, juice boxes and milk and wondered about the paths we all take in life and how two people who had really been close could end up in such unrelatable places. I was a touch jealous at the footloose nature of her life, but Maddie was stroking my fingers as we spoke. It was all good.

We said our goodbyes, with the obligatory we'll-talk-soons and headed off again in our truly different directions.

But before we left the store, I wheeled my sweaty self and grubby kids over to one of the ethnic food sections to buy something for dinner...

We got shot at (Or at least over...)

We made the yearly Memorial Day trip to the Soap Lake house again in 2008 for the Last Stand Rodeo and a little peace and quiet.

We decided to hit the road after Parker's baseball game Thursday night, which put us at the ferry terminal at 8:30... I'm not young enough or caught up on sleep enough to make night time road trips like we used to do in college. I was insanely crabby and begging for a hotel bed by the time we hit Ellensburg.

There's something about knowing you're going into a house that sits empty 99% of the time (bug and rodent phobia rising) in the dark, having to make beds, check closets, etc before you can settle down... We rolled in at 12:30 (kids awake BTW...)and proceeded into the house as quietly as possible, so as not to wake up the neighbors. Evidently, nothing is quiet enough not to wake said neighbor's dog because within two minutes of our arrival, kids in the house, me dragging sleeping bags and blankies out of the car, Eric and I hear a shot ring out. It went like this:
Me: "What the hell? Is he shooting at us?"
Eric: "Maybe it was a firework."
Me: "I'm getting in the house."
Eric (over the fence to neighbor who has just advanced through his garden with a gun in his hand): "H-h-h-ello Mr. James. It's Eric. M-m-m-ari and Wayne's son."
Mr. James: "Nobody told me you were coming. Shot into the air. Don't want to shoot no one for no good reason."
Eric: "T-t-t-hanks for watching out for the place. G-g-g-ood night, Mr. James."
Eric (to me in the house): "Yup. We were just shot at."

Now, let me sort of justify - this house has been in Eric's family for 50-ish years. It sits in a neighborhood that has had it's ups and downs and it has NEVER been messed with. Largely, I'm now sure, thanks to Mr. James. He watches out for it and now in his 80s (?) takes the shots from his porch, as opposed to coming over and looking who is there first. Not that it's okay that he fired off a round over our heads, but if you're going to have a house that sits empty for most of it's existence, he's the kind of neighbor you want to have.

So that was a first...

Everything else went without issue. Actually, everything after that was GREAT!

Maddie won the stick horse race and $5 for the 8-year-old division(Parker came in 2nd - to his recollection). Best part - the announcer calling the race in Maddie's favor halfway through. She was FLYING!

We had a family putt-putt golf contest. I don't want to brag, but it came down to a playoff hole and there again was a clear one-stroke winner. Since I'm writing this, I'll let you guess who psyched out her opponent at that last, all important hole.

Parker got his first try at fly-fishing and hooked into 2 good sized trout at Rocky Ford! For anyone who's been there, it's not an easy thing to do. Eric landed a few beautiful 24-inch trout himself.

We came across a baseball tournament in Ephrata that provided us hours of fun on Sunday and some REALLY good baseball. Home again, back to the grind. When can we go back?

May 2008 - Undefeated!

Well, we made it through another softball season. It was a (mostly) great experience. Eric and I coached Maddie's AA Fastpitch team - Swift Plumbing again, to Maddie's dismay. Some of you may remember she had the same sponsor last year and never got over me telling her their hats would be plungers. The team voted to call themselves the Swift Bulldogs... That worked to make everyone feel better.

It was a blast to watch the girls' skills develop over the course of those 2 months. Eric and I decided to really coach - demand the best out of the girls, even if it meant yelling and making them run laps. It really worked. The other coaches said, "We just want them to go have fun." Our argument was, how can they have fun if they don't know what to do? That just creates frustration and anxiety. We gave them the tools, worked on minute mechanics, ran situations until they were asking if we could just go run laps... But come game days, they showed up ready to play. Every single player stepped up to the plate and truly improved. And they were a team because we made them accountable to one another. They cheered each other on from the dugout and on the field. What a cool thing to watch develop!

The season wrapped up last week with our girls going 12-0! Undefeated! It was pretty exciting to see these girls realize their abilities. We decided to coach because Maddie had a coach last year tell us he wasn't going to teach them something because "they're just girls." To Eric and I, they were players and deserved to know what they were doing right and wrong. Was it always perfect? Absolutely not, but they learned and we hope this base that we gave them is something they will be able to build on for years to come. We had 6 of the 13 girls on our team that had never played organized fastpitch before. At the end of the season, 2 of the other coaches accused us of having a "stacked team." Eric got angry because he thought that wasn't giving the girls credit for all of the hard work they'd done. I think that was the ultimate compliment - going from never having played before to having a reputation around the league as All-Stars! You go, girls! Tune in for more on Parker's season...

February - California, here we come!

The kids and I headed South to Sacramento to get away from the long Winter here in Washington. It was not only weather related, we got to meet the newest addition to the Ruano family - 6 week old Lucas!

Rachel and Raf's house was like a citrus wonderland to our kids. With an abundance of orange and grapefruit trees, we didn't eat much else for the entire first day. Parker's face bore the brunt of the vitamin C O.D. We had to stop him from going out into the yard - he ate so much, he broke out! But even I couldn't lay off the fresh squeezed juice. Yum!

We spent a fun day in "Old Sac." Cruising the wooden sidewalks, checking out the old buildings, a "wild west shootout", the saltwater taffy store and some giant ice creams rounded out our first day.

We woke up the next morning Parker woke up with a 103' fever. That's always nice to do to a family with a newborn. Maybe we should have let him keep going with the oranges...

Regardless, we drugged him up and Raf treated us to a grand tour of San Francisco. The kids had an absolute blast at the Exploratorium. A pumped up science center that provided even a sick kid with 3 hours of fun! From there it was onto the marina district to get a view of Alcatraz - which the kids were well versed on thanks to Scooby-Doo Meets the San Fran-Psycho. This lead to a lot of questions about failed jailbreaks, why, where did they end up? Who wants to go to Fishermen's Wharf?

Here the kids got to ride on the double-decker merry-go-round and meet their first celebrity impersonator - Forrest Gump. They didn't quite get it, having not seen the movie, and especially that Mom encouraged them to take candy from this stranger's box of chocolates.

All in all it was a great long weekend. The kids loved spending time with Mati and singing songs with him (Wheels on the Bus again and again). Parker, feeling better, got to chase a flock of wild turkeys (turns out they don't defend themselves as geese would), Maddie got her hair done by someone who could actually make a french braid, Mom got to snuggle up baby Lucas and visit with her good friends. A fun time had by all. But we all missed Daddy and were glad to be home with him again.

Another Year Older...

January... In our house, we turn to a new calendar year and a new personal year for Eric and me. In the last week and a half, Eric and I turned 33. I like to mull over my resolutions until my birthday, then put the plan into action. Why do we always make resolutions self punishments? I've done the diet one plenty of times, but always get to Dec. 31st with the same size pants. This year, I'm changing my resolutions. I'm making them things that may not slim my waistline, but will definitely lighten my load. So here they are, in no particular order, my resolutions for 2008:

• Laugh more - This is going to require me not taking things too seriously. Help me to accept the things I cannot change, recognize the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. As Parker says, "Don't make mountains out of molecules."
• Make time - We are surrounded by truly great friends and so much family, we should be immersed in them. Yet somehow, we allow time to pass without seeing one another for weeks and months. Even if it is just ordering pizza and sharing a bottle of wine? Why not just do it? I'm gonna.
• Be a duck - I spend more time worrying about the dog hair on my floor and what people would say about the dust bunnies that migrate out from under my furniture. I'm not pledging not to clean, that's just an example. But not to lose sleep over the little things that people will judge you on that are sometimes just out of your control and not really a true representation. A mantra quote from Dr. Seuss - "Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." What I know for sure, is that we're all crashing and careening though this life for the first time. I may not do it the way you like, and you may not do it the way I like, but we're all here, so let's just watch the elbows. (And for those of you who didn't get the "duck" reference... just stop reading my blog. You're not going to get a lot of stuff...)
• Finally... moisturize. I'm 33. It's necessary.

Happy new year, everyone. It's my 33rd and I'm just really starting to enjoy the ride.