(Really) Great America

We happily wore ourselves out yesterday at Paramount's Great America, which is about an hour south of here. It was the annual UoP picnic. (Last year's was held at the SFZoo--see blog archives for October '05.)

Lucky for us, the new dean was looking to make a good impression, scoring us tix for $5 each (with a value of $45+ each, including meal and parking).

We all had a blast on the rides--a great balance of kid stuff in Kidzville and adult stuff like "Top Gun," "Invertigo," "Drop Zone," and "Vortex," thanks to the tag-teaming we did with our friends the Javadis.

The biggest family fun, though, was probably the "Rip Roaring Rapids," a 6-person water ride with plenty of dipping splash. Not only did the little river soak us, but sadistic voyeurs could shoot water from dry land at our rafts for a quarter. Needless to say, we were drenched (hair, pants, shirts, shoes, socks) at the end of the ride, but it was such an adrenaline rush we went back twice.

(Click on it twice for best resolution.)

Netty's Brag Page
Second Edition

Look out, Texas!
My cousin Karen's son, Connor, pitched
his very first game last weekend.
Three up, three down, baby.
Way to go, Connor, you little Amarillo stud, you!



Barritt is SEVEN.
Boo-hoo, we missed her fairy tea party
in Seattle last Saturday.
Happy Birthday, Little B.
xoxoxoxo


Big Share and Donny Daring
celebrated anniversary #23 (if I've done my math correctly),
proving that there is life after marrying someone with a teenager.
Congratulations!
(Obviously, I need a photo update.)


Andrew Schneidler passed the Washington State Bar exam!
His dad woke up at 6am just to get online and find the results,
and called Andrew right after to tell him the good news.
Perfect, since Andrew's dad is also his law partner and boss.


Mick and Anjie Reynolds kicked some serious booty
on Saturday for the Rose Petals,
their team in the UoP Softball Tournament.
Let's just say one of them stroked one out of the park
and the other had a perfect batting average.

Happy 9th Anniversary, Mick

So much good comes from giving my heart to you.

Mick started quarter #6 today. Break's over. That's a good thing. I'm ready for the kids to start emulating dental-student-dad again, rather than home-every-day-dad. When they pulled off their shirts and pants last Friday to run around the house in their underwear yelling "I'm daddy! I'm daddy!" I was definitely looking foward to Monday's shirt and tie.

GROOMING

“That one’s that skinny, and that one’s that skinny,” Aubrey says, pulling my face close and grabbing my eyebrows into an uneven pinch in each hand.

My right brow looks like it always looks after I wax. Subtle. Full. A clean crescent. My left brow I must now lovingly refer to as “the skinny brow.” Not so subtle, not so full.

Yes, Aubrey sat in the bathroom and watched me accidentally remove the lower half of my left eyebrow this morning. Much of it. Oh, and she listened to some expletives.

Somehow, when I gave the wax strip that glorious, edifying pull from the outside of my eyebrow inward, I had a line of eyebrow hairs the equivalent of a pigeon feather stuck in the strip.

Oh, vanity.

And since the wax strip hadn’t gone all the way to the inner tip of my eyebrow, I had about a half-inch square of brow bulk next to the sleek little line I’d just made.

Given my competence level at this point, the thought of re-waxing it brought visions of no brow at all to mind. However, that inner bulk was so ghastly next to said skinny brow, I knew something needed to be done.

With the help of our hair-cutting scissors, I went to work. It improved, but let’s just say I eventually ended up with a nick of skin visible in the thick of the brow (bringing to mind the lines the boys at my high school etched onto their scalps in the late 80s) and a look of perpetual perplexity.

Oh, vanity.

Eventually, I patched up the nick with some brown eyeshadow.

Then I changed my hair part.

And, no, I will not be cutting myself some bangs anytime soon.

And, I’m going to guess Aubrey’s not going to ask me to do hers either.

Recent Reads
(Covers January through September, so read the term "recent" loosely)

Fiction:
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
The Attack, Yasmina Khadra
Book Doctor, Esther Cohen
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
Ghostwritten, David Mitchell
July's People, Nadine Gordimer
Montana, 1948, Larry Watson
Nights in Rodanthe, Nicholas Sparks
The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory
Peach Cobbler Murder, Joanne Fluke
The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch

Poetry:
Axe Handles, Gary Snyder

Nonfiction:
-environmental memoirs:
Body Toxic, Susanne Antonette
My Story As Told By Water, David James Duncan
-creative nonfiction, essays:
The Boys of My Youth, JoAnn Beard
Distance and Direction, Judith Kitchen
In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction, ed. Judith Kitchen
Small Wonders, Barbara Kingsolver
-journal:
A Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton
-historical/journalism:
The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester
-memoir/geographical journalism:
Walking the Bible, Bruce Feiler
-on writing:
Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury


Note: Email me if you want the low-down on any of the above, or if you want to tell me what you're reading.

Creature Comforts*

Dane, my five-year-old, is sitting on the couch watching Prehistoric Planet, his favorite DVD about dinosaurs. Leiopleurodon—an ancient whale-like sea creature whose jagged-tooth jaws have just been likened to a giant car-crusher—has eaten, well, a dolphin thing. (Dane, of course, could tell you its name).

Dane’s cozy under his afghan but his hands are cold. He woke up too early today so I sit out here watching the video with him. I hold a homemade hot latte in my hands. It feels so good I think Dane will like holding it too. He holds it and looks so comforted I tell him he can have a sip. He raises an eyebrow and cocks his head at me.

“Go ‘head,” I coax with a nod.

He brings the cup to his lips, tips his head back a little, drinks a sip in. He slowly brings it back down to his lap, looks over at me, and smiles the smile of a conspirator. I smile back a knowing smile.

“Good stuff, huh?”

I feel like a junkie who’s just scored a kid his first hit.

Since he’s able to recall every arcane detail about the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, I’m tempted to tell him that these are Blue Bottle beans, voted by some to be the finest coffee beans roasted in San Francisco, home brewed on our Rancilio espresso machine.

Instead, I just let him hold my cup as Leiopleurodon makes his way further into the deep.

*I submitted this entry to the writingmamas.com blog. Hopefully it's in the queue for next week.

Angel Island Pix
(from earlier/July entry)

A short break along the Perimeter Trail.

Hydrating--it was HOT that day, pushing 100.
LOTS of water and Gatorade.

The Angel Island Immigration Station (known as the "Ellis Island of the West" and very important to Chinese American history) was further down the hill from our 5 mile perimeter loop, so we didn't attempt it--the perimeter loop was enough for the new cyclists. (Maybe next time.) So, no pix of that National Historic Landmark; however, the island also had old buildings where soldiers from WWI and WWII received support. We explored those for a while.

Above, inside one of the military support buildings.
Lots of cool old stuff like this to stick your fingers in.

I took a picture of Aubs on the ferry.

Aubs took one of me at the support station.

On the trail.

Trail-a-bike.

First Day of School Pix

Dane at his backpack/coat/helmet hook


Dane with our zippy little neighbor, Geornae.

Aubrey and Mom returning from first-day drop-off at school.

Writing, School, Camping

Dawn Yun, the leader of my Writing Mamas writer's group at Book Passage, has just launched a website: www.writingmamas.com. Check it out if you're curious to see what I/we've been up to. I've submitted one piece; I hope to submit more soon. (Yours truly is also in a photo.)

In other news, Dane's still enjoying kindergarten (will post pix as soon as I can download them) and Mick took his last final at 2pm today. Done with quarter #5. This one just sort of snuck up on us!

We're going camping this weekend at Mackerricher State Park, about three hours north of here; will pull Dane out at lunchtime tomorrow and start driving. Bringing bikes, kite, s'more fixins.

Ms Get Smashed By As

$2 ticket night at McAfee Coliseum earlier this summer. Picked Mick up after school and drove into Oakland to watch the Ms lose to the As something like 7-zip. No worries, though. The kids just had an experience similar to our Mariners experiences in the 80s--well, maybe even the 70s and the 90s too. Like all seasoned Ms fans, we knew to turn our attention to food, clapping to the organ music, picking candy up off the ground (oh, c'mon, everyone gets a one-time shot), and trying to ignore the boos of Oakland fans. Ichiro got an earful. (Youch. They're ruthless!)

Excuses First, Updates Second

My computer monitor red-lined two weeks ago, so I've only been nabbing computer time on an occasional evening when Mick lets me use his laptop, or for fifteen minute stints at the library when I log on for all I'm worth. Additionally, we've had the start of the school year and out-of-town guests. (Those are two things I can appreciate though.)

Dane's thrilled to be at school. He loves bike riding to commute, playing at recess, and... being a SUPER STAR! To clarify, the teacher uses a 5 star ladder system to encourage or discourage various types of behavior. Everyone starts each day in the middle/third star and is moved up or down accordingly. Let's just say little Dane Reynolds has got it goin' on. Every single day he has been a Super Star, and one day he was the only Super Star in the classroom. That meant that on Friday, his teacher surprised him by having him stand up and go to the cupboard to pick out a prize for being the only student with two full weeks of Super Star status. You should've seen him run down the hill toward me after school yesterday with two huge gold star stickers on his green uniform shirt and a surprise in his backpack. When asked what it takes to be a Super Star, he said he had to be the "behavedest." That's my boy!

Other than that, he's reading and spelling all the time at home, always asking for a piece of paper to use with his pencil. I find little lists like: DISHS, UVINTOP, FLOR, VACUM, UVIN and BATHRM (after a particularly helpful day), or AUBREY, DANE, LUKE, CATE, CAT (when he's thinking about his sister, Star Wars, and who knows what else).

Aubrey's enjoying words too. Here's what she recently wrote: SIT, LIP, SIP (with a smiley face princess at the top of the little piece of paper). I think she's up to snuff with Dane, but she's laying low for now. She's adjusting well to Dane's day-long absences (8:15am-3pm). This week she had Grammy Jan here for paper dolls, and Monday she starts her classes at the Mill Valley Rec Center with Miss Jane again. She'll do a 10 to noon pre-school class and, on Mondays, noon to 1pm Yoga Bugs class, and on Wednesdays, noon to 1pm Twist class. That'll give her some good structured time, and it'll give me a good three hours of free time twice a week. Since she and I will commute there via trail-a-bike, I'll hang out somewhere nearby, starting or revising/polishing essays.

I went in on Thursday for a cleaning at UoP with Mick. My teeth feel gorgeous, slippery, sparkly. It was interesting to watch him think through processes-- like how he'll establish a pattern for himself for the teeth cleanings, or how he'll adjust the chairs and his arms to reach for certain parts inside the mouth, or, most importantly, how he'll hold his arms so he doesn't brush up on the chest of the female he's working on. (I caught him using my chest as an elbow rest once, but I think he knew exactly what he was doing.)

I'm pleased to report he has a gentle, confident manner at chairside and it's very clear that he's embarked on a fitting career. It's really exciting to see him working so hard at school (and at home).

Signing out.

Deja vu (with a twist)

"What are those little bumps on your face?" Dane asked while studying my face this morning. "On your nose and next to your nose?"

"Those are moles, also called beauty marks," I said, raising my finger to his face. "You have one here by your eye and one on your cheek and one by your eyebrow..."

He waited a second and then said, "Mole marks? Mine are made by raccoons."

Little man starts school tomorrow. I was surprised at Longs today, while buying Dane the last of his school supplies, that there was a quick catch in the throat: I'm not ready! repeated three or four times in the head. But, really, I am. And so is he. I'm so excited for him to enter this new kind of life, and I'll do my best to see that it goes smoothly for him, to keep guiding him. I say that knowing too though that so much of it is in his court, which is probably the part that parents find hardest to accept. He gets to show up on his own now, as Dane, applying all that he has and is to the social and academic scheme of things. Thank goodness he's a smart, strong, sweet, happy guy. Will let you know how it goes.

Oh yeah, we'll be riding bikes to and from school. He'll ride solo (and he gets to lock his bike up at the bike rack!), and Aubs and I will ride together with the trail-a-bike. She and I are helping out at lunchtime tomorrow; we'll find out later what kind of regular weekly volunteering we (I) can do--an hour a week in the classroom, I'm hoping. Aubrey has permission to come along to campus anytime I'm there, which suits her and Dane just fine. She'll start six hours a week of pre-school on September 11th.

The Same Sky

This morning Aubrey studied my face. While sucking her thumb, an activity she’s slowly eliminating from her routine, she pointed to my face with her free hand: “You have a dot here, it’s brown,” she said, pointing to the bridge of my nose. “And a dot here above your lip,” pointing next to my nose. “That one’s the same color as your skin.”

She studies me the way lovers study each other, the way I study her father, tracing the details of the skin—the marks along the cheekbone, the spine, across the shoulder blade, around the ankle. She looks at me with such love and familiarity I recall studying my own mother’s face when I was four. I pointed at the brown dot on each cheek, the perfect symmetry. “What are those?” I’d asked. “Some people call them moles, others call them beauty marks,” she’d said. “I’ll call them beauty marks,” I’d said, caressing her face, drinking her in. A couple years later, I would fold pink construction paper in half for Mother's Day, and draw her dark curly hair, her square jaw, her brown eyes—such a contrast to my own hazel eyes and straight blonde hair. And, finally, I’d make her cheeks rosy, with a brown dot on each. Unmistakably my mother.

Now I look into Aubrey’s face (every day, as much as I can) and memorize the little mark below her eye, the one next to her nose, the one across her face on the other side of her chin. And Dane, my boy, I memorize his too: at the outer tip of one eyebrow, one next to his nose—on the opposite side of his sister’s—then across his face to his cheek, and then on the edge of his chin. I think Little Dipper, Orion, my own little constellations.

At my yearly physical, the doctor checks my skin, the marks on my body. She looks for the mark that might not belong, because our moles grow in families, she says. Wherever there’s one of a certain kind (in color or shape or size) there’ll be another somewhere. That’s how we know what belongs. I think of my mother, my husband, my children. I put our faces side by side in my mind. I think of these families of moles, passed down to generations, our beauty marks to memorize and recall, our own little constellations hailing from the same sky.

Holy ER Cost!

Mick held up his insurance statement last night and said, "Guess how much my trip to the ER cost."

I started high, or so I thought: "$1500."

"Nope. Guess again."

"$3000."

"Nope. Give up? $7000."

Wow. The statement was divided into three or four amounts, and we're not sure which monies went where, but we figured the CT scan took the big portion of it, and then the urine test to check for the kidney stones, etc., etc. Wow. Thank goodness for insurance, but that just blows our minds. A two-hour visit!

Jan Took A SpillHere's what she had to say about it:

Took [this photo] this morn, 24 hours after I was walking with Indi to
Barritt's t-ball game and the sidewalk just up and tripped me. My chin,
nose and forehead - basically my face took the brunt of the impact.
Cement and one's face make for quite a dramatic and painful experience.
Must have frightened Indi a bit with my nose bleeding and also bleeding
from the cut on the bridge of my nose. She was a real trooper - thanks,
Indi!  I look a lot like Mike did after his boating drama. I head to
Hawaii for three weeks in two days and then on to San Fran for two
weeks. The first two weeks in Hawaii I'will be a black eyed 'Susan' -
no that'd be a black eyed 'Janice'. Have a headache most of the time
and  some neck and lower back and knee muscles that are conversing with
me. My one healthy major joint, right knee, was first to hit the
sidewalk and is abraised and bruised and hopefully not triggered to
lose it's cartilage like the other joints have done.

[Other than the obvious "Poor Jan!" comments, fyi: I'm still working on pix/entries from our trip north, as well as Minihawks updates.]

I'm sad for Maureen today. She had to put her sweet old dog Ally down this week--Ally who was never more than three feet from Maureen in the house, sleeping at the foot of the bed, clicking her toenails against the wood floors, head in Maureen's lap for movies. Ally was ninety-something in dog years.

Photos:
1. Sadly, I don't have a picture of Ally. This is as close as I've got for now.
2. Maureen and me after Portland Marathon in '04.

The day we returned from our cruise I met up with my friend Karen. We've been friends for twenty years now, which seems really wierd to write, and she knows and understands me well. We spent the night at her place in Ballard, where we drank coffee, watched movies, and got our toenails done. (We like to think we're tough, but these girly things appeal to our sensibilities.) The next day, she made Aubrey's hair and fingernails pretty (see happy little miss above) and played Pirates with Dane.

Lately, Karen has been my reader, providing feedback and encouragement for works in progress. She also reminded me I have nothing to lose by writing S.E. Hinton an email requesting an interview to do a write-up for my writer's group at Book Passage. It's a long shot, since S.E. Hinton doesn't do interviews or readings any more, but I'm hoping to ask some questions about her perspective on what it took her to write as a mother, versus what it took her to write as a teenager. *(I mean, she's extraordinary: she wrote The Outsiders at sixteen when she was fed up with the quality of young adult (YA) literature. And the quality of her literature was so high and so fresh that it changed the face of YA literature for good.)

*Will make a note in the blog if anything comes of my request.