Super

"Oh Steve, you know you can't beat
the Nazis without me!" (tv.com)

My daughters have recently become interested in super heroes. It started with watching a couple of old 70s Wonder Woman episodes on Saturday nights with my dad. Then I picked up a pair of cape shirts for them at Target. We went to the library and borrowed a copy of The Princess in Black. The other day I heard my daughter singing her own lyrics to the Batman theme song: “Batgirl, Batgirl, she chases bad guys and runs away from them, and catches them sometimes, she’s a super hero, not a princess; Batgirl!”

I’m not a super hero, but that doesn’t stop my three year old from warming my heart when she says, “You’re the best, Mommy!” So I started to think about what super powers I do have. I can’t fly or do fancy martial arts, but I do have amazing ears.

People always say that moms have eyes in the back of their heads, but it’s not true. Vision has nothing to do with it. Moms have super hearing. I can tell if my kid is sick in the middle of the night or just having a bad dream, determine whether there are shenanigans during a suspicious silence, or know if the baby is crying because he is hungry or tired.

It may not be the most interesting power, but it really helps me out a lot. And just because I don’t run around at night chasing bad guys (or running away from them), doesn’t mean I can’t tie a blanket around my shoulders and chase my kids (and tickle them sometimes)!

Lost Hat Found

All is quiet when I walk in the front door of the city’s newest shelter and adoption center. The shelter’s founder, Aaron Blake, assures me that it’s less quiet in the back where volunteers are hard at work, and that I “should have been here earlier, a Little League Team dropped by.”

You can’t adopt a dog or cat here. You can’t pet a snake or watch a turtle have lunch. This isn’t a shelter for animals. It’s a shelter for hats.

Lost Hat Found was opened by Aaron Blake and his wife Sara two months ago after they inherited a great uncle’s hat collection. “I already had eight or nine of my own,” says Blake, “and he gave me twice that many.”

“More than you could ever wear yourself,” Sara adds. All the headgear was in good condition and had sentimental value, so the couple decided not to throw them away, or even to give them to Goodwill.

“We want them to be treasured,” says Blake, “just like we would treasure them ourselves.” They decided to open Lost Hat Found.

The Blakes don’t charge for hats. “This is an adoption center, not a store,” Blake informs some soon-to-be adopters. “We ask for a free will donation, just whatever you’d like to give us to help keep the lights on. The important thing is how you treat that hat you’re takin’ home.”

Sometimes Lost Hat Found gets donations of a different kind. “We had a lady walk in here the other day with about thirty hat boxes all loaded onto a wagon,” Blake says, stretching a hand up toward the ceiling. “All stacked up to here.” And what did they do with them? “A lot of them were real old. Sara’s got a friend at the historical society who took a bunch to put in a museum, but we’ve still got a few here.” A beautiful white and pink cylindrical hat box stands on the end of the counter, and Blake calls Sara out to try it on so I can see. It’s a little white circle with a matching short veil, called a fascinator, which Sara informs me would be the perfect “something old” for any bride’s wedding.

But cocktail hats are not usually what comes to mind when one thinks of unwanted headgear. “We got plenty of all kinds,” Blake says, and waves me behind the counter and into the back room, where Lost Hat Found’s volunteers are hard at work.

“First I wash everything,” Sara tells me as she shows me her work station, which consists of a washing machine, sink, and a table spread with lots of different kinds of brushes and stain removal products. “Not everything can just be thrown into the [washing] machine, but it’s gotta get clean somehow,” she says. Her current project is removing some glue from the side of a bowler hat. “The local high school drama club needs this for a costume, and I want to make sure it looks nice for them.”

Sara’s friend Kathy occupies a spot in front of a sewing machine. She shows me a recent acquisition: a very battered camouflage ball cap that she calls “Ol’ Larry.” “Somebody dropped Ol’ Larry off here yesterday. Said he found it in a ditch next to the stadium while he was out on a run. Probably it fell off a tailgater’s head on the way to the game or something, and it got run over a few times before it ended up in the ditch. Sara washed it, and now I’ll sew it up as best I can, maybe patch it if I need to.” She bends the brim of the hat and smiles. “This old thing’s still got some love left to give, and we’ll help make sure it gets the chance to give it.”

Ol' Larry, before Kathy started her work.

Blake’s cousin Steve keeps track of the shelter’s inventory. “I’m not really a… hat person,” he admits, “but Uncle Eli liked them and so does Aaron, and I guess a lot of other people do, too. The least I can do is to help out.”

Steve shows me several shelves full of ball caps ready for adoption. “Some of these looked pretty bad when they first showed up,” he says, “but Sara and Kathy work wonders.” Steve says they work especially hard when large amounts come in all at once. “A couple of weekends ago a guy dropped off like three garbage bags full of hats exactly like this one,” he says, as he holds out a dark blue ball cap with chartreuse and silver streaks. “This is usually the kind of thing that Little League teams are looking for when they come in. But sometimes the kids get carried away picking out their own hats, and the coaches go ahead and let them wear what they want. I heard one of them say that the kids were matching because none of their hats matched.”

You wouldn’t think there would be much demand for a place like Lost Hat Found, but Sara says that’s not true. “The first week we had a couple of kids in here looking for stuff for an Indiana Jones costume, so we let them have Aaron’s old fedora,” she recalls. “They told some of their friends and the next thing you know we’ve got all kinds of people calling, asking to be put on a waiting list for all sorts of different kinds of specialty hats, just in case we ever get them in. I’ve found forever homes for three different rainbow striped Cat in the Hat top hats.”

Even I found a hat to take home; Kathy finished up just as I was about to leave, and Ol’ Larry turned out to be just my size. Hopefully Lost Hat Found will continue to benefit the community and become what they have found for so many people: the perfect fit.

Mist in the Morning

My husband drives the same drive every day, back and forth to work: once in the morning, and once in the evening. It’s a lovely drive, but he doesn’t see it anymore. To him, it’s just the commute. Yeah, there are lovely rolling hills and beautiful river views, but he’s become immune to their breathtakingness.

I think we all get that way, sometimes.

This morning I rode along with my husband to work. We discussed normal, everyday things: future plans, what we were planning to give our children for Christmas. Except for when I interrupted everything with remarks about how gorgeous the scenery was. Mist was clinging to the ground, refusing to be chased away by the light of the rising sun. At one point we went down a hill and under a cloud lying low in the valley of a field. It was awesome. “Is it always like this?” I asked my husband as we pushed through a bank of cloud that obliterated the trees, clouds, and river. He shrugged. “Sometimes... A lot of the time, I guess.”

I wondered how often that sort of thing happens to me. Not that I’m often oblivious to lovely scenery, but it made me think about how often I might be failing to recognize and appreciate wonderful things in my life. I’m not the type of person who overexaggerates every disappointing moment that I experience, but I do have those times when I feel like stomping off to shout, “EVERYTHING IS THE WORST.”

But someone else “riding along” with me might be able to more easily point out the wonderful things in my life: my adorable children, my supportive parents, my awesome brothers (and their families), and my hilarious, hardworking husband. When I’m annoyed or stressed or frustrated, it’s easy for me to miss noticing that not every moment, not everything in my life is annoying or stress-inducing or frustrating. When I feel that way, I need to stop, look around, and notice the wonderful things that are always there, things that I might be too distracted or too used to having that I don’t actually see them.

My life will always have its hills and valleys, its good times and bad. But I hope that I never forget the beautiful things about it: the family I have been blessed with, friends who love me, and breathtaking views of mist in the morning.

Thursday in History: Saunter

There are some days when my father says, “Let’s go for a walk.” We assemble the troops and form a column: my mother and my husband in the front, various children straggling along behind them, and my father and I bringing up the rear. This separation is never intentional, but it always happens. It’s not because my mother and husband don’t like walking with my father and I, but rather because my husband has long legs, and my mother, who always walks like she’s trying to get somewhere as fast as she can, is the only one who can keep up with him. My father and I, on the other hand, just like to saunter.

We like to enjoy the walk. We look at trees and houses, admiring the architecture and foliage. That’s not to say that my husband and mother aren’t enjoying their walk; they’re just enjoying it at a rather higher rate of speed. The kids enjoy running from one set of grandparent and parent to the other and back again.

On this day in history in 1979, W.T. Rabe, a man working at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan, was getting fed up with the recent growing craze for jogging. He argued that it was much better to take a saunter on the hotel’s substantial porch. Sauntering, he argued, gave one enough time to stop and smell the roses, appreciating the various beauties of the world that one would miss if they insisted instead on dashing past them at high speeds.

And so World Sauntering Day was born.

In an interview with NPR in 2002, John Rabe, son of the man who brought this miraculous holiday into being, stated, “Those who are ‘in the know’ on Sauntering say that you’re just born with it.” It’s not hard to see who I get it from.

Hey, Dad, let’s go for a walk.

Yo

I’m not a huge fan of yogurt. I’ll eat it frozen (Ben & Jerry’s “Liz Lemon” is particularly good), but slurping it down for a snack is not my favorite thing. My daughters love it, and my husband buys it so he has something quick to grab in the morning on the way out the door. But there’s a strange phenomenon in our fridge with the yogurt: certain types seem to be tossed aside in favor of others.

“I don’t understand why he does this,” I told my mother over the phone as I grabbed a cast off flavor to favor my daughters with. “I know it’s probably just because he wants to try the different flavors, but he wants to eat the ones he likes first, but it just seems like he’s buying them all and then only eating the ones he knows are good.”

“Your father does that!” my mother replied. “I have to buy him peach yogurt. Only peach! And he just eats peach yogurt, all the time. I would think that the point of having different flavors is to try all of them; I’d want to.”

“He just knows what he likes,” I said. “It’s fun to try different things, but if you know you like something…” I fished around for a metaphor close to her heart. “It’s not like you make your steak different every time. You’re not like ‘ooh, I’ll cook this well done and see how that is.’”

“Hm, that’s true,” my mother admitted. She is a staunch defender of the rare-steak-or-no-steak agenda.

“if you’re not sure you’ll like it, it’s like you’re wasting your time.” I said. “If it’s gross, then you’re sitting there, wishing you’d eaten the thing you knew you liked.” My daughters chomped down on their Key Lime yogurt. “I win,” I concluded.

“Well, as long as it’s getting eaten,” my mother conceded defeat.

“As long as they like it,” I added. “And as long as I don’t have to eat it.”

Tabletop: Say Anything

Every family has their own brand of humor. I noticed this over the Thanksgiving holiday when we got the chance to play our newly purchased table top game, Say Anything. My husband describes it as “Apples to Apples, only without a handful of useless cards that you just have to waste.”

Say Anything comes with eight whiteboards and pens, sixteen chips for bidding, and question cards that have five question options. The judge picks and asks a question, and the other players write down the answer they think the judge will choose. When everyone is finished writing, the answers are revealed and the judge locks in their vote. Then, the players place their chips on the answer(s) they think that the judge is most likely to pick. When the judge reveals what answer was chosen, the writer gets a point, and any other players who placed chips on the answer get a point as well.

I spent the entire time playing Say Anything in Colorado and New Mexico trailing behind everyone else in points. I think I tied for third place once, but that was only because second place was a three way tie. My husband’s family has their own brand of humor, and while my answers were funny, they weren’t as funny as my brother-in-law’s, at least, not to the other players.

When we got home, my parents brought along my nephew when they came over to hug my children, and my brother and sister-in-law came to pick up my nephew. And since it was dinner time, it turned into an impromptu party, so we got out Say Anything.

I won.

Since I’ve got my family’s style of humor, they were much more appreciative of my answers than my husband’s family was. We wrote a lot of the same answers, actually. For instance, my sister in law was judging the question: “What is an ostrich thinking when it sticks its head in the sand?” My husband won because his answer, “Ooh! Sand!” was the only one that was different: my mom, dad, brother and I all wrote an approximation of “No one can see me/I’m invisible.”

Say Anything is a really fun party game that you can have a good time playing even if you aren’t winning. I know from experience.

Thursday in History: Interesting... Dinner

The third day of October is the anniversary of lots of interesting things.

In 1863, President Lincoln declared that Thanksgiving would be celebrated annually (prior to that, “a Thanksgiving” had been declared by leaders whenever something happened that was worth having a party for, sort of like a Roman triumph but less ego-boosting).

October 3rd is a big day in the history of space exploration.  The first manufactured object to enter space was launched from Germany in 1942. Twenty years later Sigma 7 orbited the earth six times in nine hours, the longest manned flight at the time. The Space Shuttle Atlantis, which was retired from use in July 2011, had its first flight twenty eight years ago today, in 1985.

I can tell you exactly where I was standing on this day in 1995: at school in Elmwood, Nebraska, in the English classroom, watching the verdict of the O.J. Simpson trial. I can still remember Danae jumping off of the desk she’d been sitting on, yelling “WHAT?!” before the rest of the room erupted into a cacophony.

These things are all interesting and historically significant in their own way. But why write about Thanksgiving, space travel, or the criminal actions of former NFL stars when you could research the murky, often challenged world of bar food? Apparently (stories vary), on this day in history in 1964, Buffalo wings were “invented” at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. Every member of the family who owned the place tells a different version of their creation, and these are all hotly contested by another man from the same city who claims that he is responsible for their creation years earlier.

Whatever their origins, I know one thing: Mom, Dad’s gonna want B-dubs for dinner tonight.

Bounce Fest

Bouncy castles aren’t very Czech.

The Wilber Czech Festival takes place the first weekend in August. People come from all over the world to enjoy the music, food, and atmosphere of the busiest weekend of the year in the Czech Capitol of the United States.

My family goes every year. We put on our vests, drive down to Wilber, find for a parking spot, have lunch at the Sokol Hall, and fight for the last plate of kolaches and some jaternice at Frank’s or Wilber Meat Market.

The parade is necessary. This year the weather was amazing: cloudy, breezy, and cool. Usually we’re sweltering in the heat and humidity, but we still stand out on Main Street with everyone else, enjoying the procession of classic cars, tractors, past and present Czech Queens, and marching bands. Our favorite things are the pool bus (it’s nice to get splattered with water in the heat; even more fun when it’s because someone’s just done a cannonball into a tank of water on a repurposed school bus) and the Wilber-Clatonia Alumni Band: years of graduates back home for another performance, all dressed in traditional costumes.

The new hat we bought this
year. It fits everyone!

We sometimes grab a lemonade or a funnel cake from a street vendor, or acquire new Czech memorabilia to wear next year. This year we walked past the Bohemian Tractor Pull, which my dad tried to convince me consists of several people pulling a tractor instead of a tractor pulling something. But apparently he’s right.

Another thing we added to our Fest experience was paying too much money for five minutes in a bouncy castle. My daughter is finally old enough to giggle and jump up and down at the same time, so my dad made sure she had a good time. The hardworking employees from a local bouncy castle rental company in Crete had inflated a traditional bouncy castle, a bouncy obstacle course, a bouncy slide, and a couple of other things that were “too big” for my three year old.

The Bouncy Slide in all its glory

My brother and sister-in-law headed home to make sure my nephew had a nap, my mom and brother took my one year old on a walk, and my dad and I stayed and laughed as my three year old took possession of the slide.

Children of various ages would stand in line, the employee would take their tickets or check to make sure they were wearing an “unlimited” bracelet, then help them up if needed. The kid had to get to the top before the next one could start climbing, and then they could slide down as slowly or as quickly as they wanted, with as much or as little bounce as they could handle.

The line was sometimes long, sometimes short, but it was interesting to watch my daughter learn that she had to wait for her turn behind a line of people. Then she’d climb to the top, run back and forth trying to decide if she wanted to try the slide on the left or the slide on the right, and then zoom down, giggling.

Bouncy castles may not be very Czech, but they do fit with the spirit of fun at the Wilber Czech Festival. Even though it’s hot, it’s worth it for the food, the music, and the good times. My daughter definitely enjoyed herself; she even said the next day, “Mommy, are we going to the Czech Fest today?”

MEMORIAL Day

Today is a day to stop and remember all those who have gone before us. To remember their lives and how they lived them, and to thank them for the impact they had on us.

It’s also a wonderful day to rest and think about the great things you have in your life. Like family, friends, and a newly varnished dining room floor.

If you work hard every other day of the year, it’s nice to have a break once in a while to enjoy life and maybe have a nap.

Enjoy today. Go for a walk. Take a nap. And remember that there are many people who make sure that you can live the way you do, and be thankful for them.

A Fine Day for FareBall

Some people dislike major holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter... they don’t like them because it usually means that they have to go home and spend some time with their parents and siblings. Some people are judgmental and competitive and like to compare their lives to those of their extended family, and determine their own self worth by how well they are doing and how well their family members are doing.

Not my family. We recognize that we all have different strengths and abilities. One of my brothers can teach anyone to appreciate the mechanics of a sonata. The other can teach anyone to appreciate the mechanics of mechanics. And I’m always inflicting historical knowledge on my family members, like reasons why my dad’s ancestry DNA test came back 38% Scandinavian (VIKINGS!).

We have a good time when we get together, and it doesn’t always have to be on national holidays. We hang out, talk about stuff, make arrangements to hang out some more or watch each other’s kids when we want to go on a date with our spouses (or when we just want to chill with our siblings’ awesome kids). We also eat together (DUMPLINGS!) and partake of our parents’ wisdom.

Easter isn’t usually gorgeous and sunny, but this Easter was. While I was slaving in the kitchen to produce enjoyable food (a fusion of my mother-in-law’s culinary wizardry and the deliciousness that is my grandmother’s cooking), my brothers and husband escaped with a frisbee to the backyard. When I was finished, I looked around and found no one in the kitchen; my sister-in-law was feeding my nephew and my parents were playing with my daughters in the other room.

I went out in the backyard. “Hey!” I shouted. “Nice job leaving me to do all the work!” My husband objected with the observation that if he tries to help I shove him out and tell him he’s getting in the way anyway, which is a valid point, so I shrugged and joined in their game.

It was kickball. Sort of. It was “every man for himself” kickball. If you could get all the way around the “bases” (corners of the yard), you’d get a point for yourself, but if the guy in the middle got a point if he was able to get you “out,” either by catching the ball when you kicked it or by throwing it at you and hitting you with it. Oh, and there was no pitching, just the person who was “up” kicking the ball out of their own hand.

My nephew finished his snack and my sister-in-law brought him outside to enjoy the sunshine. My mom came out to watch the game, and sat on the bench under the tree making sure my three year old wasn’t getting into too much mischief. My dad watched from the driveway, with my one year old all bundled up in her jacket.

The rules of the game kept changing. “So if you kick it on the roof or over the fence into the driveway it’s a home run,” one of my brothers said, “and don’t chase the ball down the stairs because if you go too fast you’ll break your ankle,” the other added. “And if you kick it and someone else gets in, then you get half a point,” my husband decreed. “And if you hit a baby you’re out!” my mom shouted, as my one year old toddled across the middle of the yard.

The ball was terrible. It sat out in the yard all winter and was lopsided and half deflated and didn’t go where you wanted to when you threw it, even if you were a foot away from your fleeing husband. Kicking was problematic because of the tree branch that hangs across one side of the yard, not to mention the electrical wires that stretch from the pole on the other side of the fence to the house next door.

We had a great time. I’d kick the ball and take off as my brother or my husband went after it, and as I ran for the nearest corner of the yard that we’d designated as first base, I’d scream, whether my pursuer was nearby or not. My husband would make fun of me, making faces or taunting gestures at me. My brothers would pose dramatically before each kick, pointing off into the distance where they expected the ball to majestically arch, even though they knew it probably wouldn’t. Sometimes they’d point in two different directions. Mostly, we ran our butts off and had an awesome time.

The next day I sent my brother a text message: “HOLY CRAP I am so sore!” He texted back, “Me too, I have to keep stopping to stretch.” I responded, “We either need to never do that again or do it all the time.”

My family has a great time when we get together. Sometimes we sit and watch a movie, sometimes we hang out and talk about electric vehicles, and other times we make up a game and run around in the yard getting muddy and displaying how out of shape we are. It doesn’t matter what we do, we always enjoy hanging out with family, even on days that it’s yucky and cold out.

But it’s always more fun when it’s a fine day for FareBall.

Goodbye, Lucille

Our PS3 is dead.


We never had a video game console when I was a kid. My mother was of the opinion that if we wanted to play, there was a perfectly good yard outside to run circles around and that we had zillions of perfectly good toys to aid in the improvement of our imaginations. My brothers and I didn’t disagree, and I can’t ever remember us begging for any kind of gaming system.


We had friends whose parents eagerly doled out cash for the newest thing. The kid that lived down the block had a Gameboy and an NES, I can remember sitting in the basement of their house watching him play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I can’t remember ever playing it, so I probably turned down the opportunity if it was ever offered, or I wasn’t much put out about not being asked if I wanted to play.


In high school, my best friend was a writer for a small video game review website, and he had a sweet setup in his room with an N64, a Dreamcast, and his recently acquired PS2 all plugged in to one TV which was specifically for gaming. I can remember lounging around, watching him play things like Space Channel 5 (a music game sort of like DDR but without the dance pad), Seaman (a game in which the player raised a fish/man thing from the tank to walking; the coolest part is that it came with a microphone that would attach to the controller so that the “seaman” could be controlled with the player’s voice), and Shenmue (which, I was told at the time, was supposed to have been the most beautiful game ever made).


I can’t ever remember feeling jealous that other kids had these things, just knowing matter-of-factly that they had them and I didn’t.


Then, when I was a senior in high school, there was a raffle held at school for homecoming or something of that nature. I remember sitting in the middle of the gym floor with the pep band, a tenor saxophone on my hip, as they announced the prize, a PS2, and it’s winner: my brother.


We weren’t sure what to do with it. My dad bought us some games. We figured out how to plug it into the TV. I asked my video gaming friend if we had to have a DVD remote in order to use the PS2 for that purpose.


Once we figured out what to do with it, we liked to play RPGs. Racing games and puzzle games were all right, but the best thing about an RPG was the story, and the fact that we could all enjoy it together.  Our favorites were (and still are, in our hearts) Jak and Daxter, Rachet & Clank, and Sly Cooper. We’d help each other out on the puzzle minigames, I would always hand over the controller during a racing minigame (I hate those), and if one of us would get stuck during a level, there was usually a sibling nearby to call in for backup: “Can you do this part for me? I can’t get it.”


A year or so after my husband and I were married, the hubbub in the video game world was the new generation of video game consoles, which were competing for the attention of gamers everywhere. Neither my husband or I are huge fans of the Halo series (and that’s the only way to be with the Halo series, either you’re an insanely huge fan or you couldn’t care less about it), so we weren’t terribly interested in owning an XBox 360. The PS3, with its capacity for gorgeous graphics, was too dauntingly priced for a newly married couple who needed to spend their time studying instead of gaming anyway. The family friendly Wii looked like it would be fun, and it was not only more reasonably priced but looked like it was going to have the kind of games we’d want to play.


We didn’t rush out and get anything the night it came out, like some people we knew. We leisurely purchased a used Wii on ebay for pretty much what we would have paid for a new one. The greatest thing about the Wii was that you could spend hours playing the little minigames that it came with: golf, tennis, baseball, boxing, and bowling. You could also spend days and weeks primping your “Mii,” the little avatars used to represent you during these little minigames. There were online contests to make Miis, and you could watch every one you made walk in a little parade.


Then my husband and I graduated from college. There was no more studying to be done, so we were free to pay attention to other things. One of the things my husband began to want to give his attention to was football (NFL football, to be specific). Beginning to pay attention to football again was a ritual for him, and it began with purchasing the most recent copy of Madden. And for some reason (perhaps this was part of the ritual) he was determined to have the PS3 version.


The biggest problem with this was that we did not have a PS3 at the time. We didn’t have any other games for it, and we already had a PS2 (which was on the fritz) and a Wii. I didn’t see why we needed to purchase yet another console just for his silly sports simulation game.


One of the selling points of the PS3 when it first arrived was all the shouting about how it would be backward compatibility, that is, they would not only be able to play games produced for the PS3, but also games produced for the PS2. A big draw for me is replayability. A month or so ago I broke out our dusty copy of Jak and Daxter and played it for a while (I even got through the Fire Canyon by myself, Jas!). My husband was able to talk me into getting a PS3 with the majority of his argument weighing on the fact that I would be able to play my old PS2 games on it, too.


We skipped off to Best Buy to purchase a PS3 of our very own. We were saddened to discover that though the price had been slashed, the backward compatibilty had been, too. Sony’s definition of “Slim” is apparently “less awesome.” Retreating to a nearby fast food joint in tears, we discussed our options.


One of our friends had purchased a PS3 when they were being swept off the shelves and twice the price. He’s one of those people whose gaming area looks like a museum of fun. He probably still has a working Saturn.


We devised a plan, in which my husband would be able to enjoy his silly football video game and in which I would also be able to enjoy my games. We marched back over to Best Buy and left triumphantly clutching a $300 piece of amusement. And upon our friends’ next visit, we switched the new one for the old.


Even though it sounds like it’s trying to launch itself into orbit every time we turn it on, the enjoyment of this video game console has been immense. We played the Assassin’s Creed series on it, the new Batman games, any old PS2 game I could want, and of course, every Madden game since the one we got it for.


But the other night, disaster struck. My husband switched it on and was getting ready to exercise while playing yet another round of pretend football. He was bustling around, getting out the stationery bike, and the PS3 was puffing along, playing the intro to the game.


And suddenly, it stopped.


My husband forgot what he was doing and went to poke at it. He unplugged it and devoted himself to opening the case and taking a can of compressed air to its insides. Pieces of it were spread all over my dining room table until he applied himself to putting it back together the next evening.


“Beep, beep, beep beep,” it reported, when he tried to turn it on. We translated this as: “Goodbye, cruel world, argh,” and pronounced it dead.


We never gave it a name, but if we had, it would have been something like “Judy” or maybe “Lucille.” We’ll never be able to find another PS3 like it. We can get a new one, but I won’t be able to bust out The Sims Bustin’ Out; we’ll have to make our fritzy PS2 work if I ever want to play that again. I guess Slim Jim the Reasonably Priced but Less Awesome PS3 is probably in our future.


So here’s to you... Goodbye, Lucille.

Slim Jim with Lucille

We Call Him Pappy

My husband and I are both the oldest of the siblings in our families, and in fact we both have two younger brothers whose ages match up: my younger brother was born the same year as his, and our youngest brothers were also born the same year. My husband and I were the first children in our families to get married, and then the first to have our own children. Our oldest daughter was the first grandchild for both his parents and mine.


There’s a lot to do when you’re getting ready to have a baby, and one thing you never really think about is what you’re going to teach your child to call your parents.


I never called my grandparents anything but “Grandma” and “Grandpa.” Both my mother’s parents are living, but my paternal grandfather died in the spring of the year I was born, so I only ever had one Grandpa. I differentiate my grandmothers by calling one “Grandma” and the other “Grandma Betty.” It isn’t just a name my brothers & I call her, my cousins call her that, too.


It never occurred to me that anyone would call their grandparents something else, and so I never thought that my parents would like to be called anything but that. My in-laws shrugged and said they didn’t mind, “Grandma” and “Grandpa” would be fine. I was brainstorming what my mother would be called when she told me, “I want to be ‘Grandma!’”


Because of the difference in location of our respective parents, it’s easy to keep the Grandmas separate. When we are with my mother-in-law, talking with my daughter about my mother, we call her “NebraskaGrandma.” And when my mother talks to my daughter about my mother-in-law, she says “your Grandma back home in Colorado.” We ran into a little snag when my mother came to visit once, so both of them were in the same house. My daughter didn't bat an eyelash, and continued calling my mother-in-law "Grandma" and gave my mother a new name for the weekend: "Naama."


It wasn’t going to be hard to separate the Grandpas, my father has a clean cut face while my father-in-law has scared his family in the past by shaving off his mustache. My father was the first one to get a smile out of my daughter when she was five weeks old, so we started calling him “SillyGrandpa.” My father-in-law has acquired the title of “MustacheGrandpa.”

That doesn’t quite work very well for keeping them separated in my daughter’s mind, not because she doesn’t realize which one is which but because she knows which Grandma goes with which Grandpa. We have a song we sing about her relatives, the first line of which is “Cora loves her ______ so, so much,” and we substitute a different name of a family member in each time we sing it. One day she was “helping” me make lunch and we were singing. We had just finished singing about her MustacheGrandpa, and I said, “Who shall we sing about now?” “Grandma!” she ordered. “Well, which Grandma do you mean?” I asked, “NebraskaGrandma, or-” “MustacheGrandma!” (Just to clarify, my mother-in-law is a beautiful woman who does not have a mustache.)

We still have trouble sometimes keeping the Grandmas separate, but we don’t get confused about Grandpas, since my father decided what he wanted to be called: Pappy. We thought it was kind of silly at first, but my daughter does sound pretty adorable calling him: “Pappy! Pappy!” This has made it easier to talk to my daughter about her grandparents. When I say, "Shall we go to Grandma's house today?" and she says, "Pappy's house?" I can say, "No, let's go to Grandpa and Grandma's house. We will go to Grandma and Pappy's house another day."

My sister-in-law found a t-shirt for Father’s Day that says “I’m on Granddad Duty.” “Too bad it doesn’t say ‘Pappy’ instead,” she said. I agreed, so I set about making one that would really work.

I can’t wait to see him wear it proudly.


Happy Father’s Day to all the Grandpas, Pappies, Granddads, Papas, & Grandfathers out there, whatever your grandkids like to call you. Thank you for loving us and for spoiling us. We love you.

A Memorial Day Run

Last night I set my alarm on vibrate so that I wouldn’t wake my husband up. Inevitably, I woke up before it went off, and with one eye open and one eye shut, tried to manipulate the buttons on my phone to turn it off. I thought I had it figured out, but either because of the fact that I wasn’t wearing my glasses or due to the early hour, it went off at 5:15 anyway. I switched it off, with my glasses on and so less blind this time, and went out into the kitchen to start making coffee.

I don’t own a coffee maker. My mom brought her Keurig, one of those fancy things that makes one cup at a time. I heated up water for tea for myself, and made my brother a cup of Starbucks instant mocha with about a tablespoon of sugar and ¼ of a cup of milk. Then I poked at the Keurig to make my mother a cup, brought it to her, then confiscated it again to give it to my father instead. I made her a second one with less water, since she likes a stronger cup of coffee than my father anyway. My brothers chomped into a loaf of banana bread, and my dad paced around the apartment, getting warmed up.

At the traffic light waiting to turn off of Jay Road onto the Diagonal Highway, my brother called out, “Prius!” “Where?” my mother asked. “Wait for it...” he said, and ten seconds later one zipped through the green light on the highway. “How did you see that?” she asked, craning her neck to look around the front seat. “I didn’t,” he replied, laughing, and we high-fived. People up here love their eco-friendly Toyotas.

I had been a little concerned about the traffic, even at 6 AM, but it wasn't a problem; we waited a reasonable amount of time to get around the corner onto Arapahoe, and by 6:25 the passengers had exited my tiny Volkswagen Golf.

The Bolder Boulder is one of the largest road races in the world, with over fifty thousand participants, run every year since 1979 on Memorial Day in Boulder, Colorado. It’s a big production for only ten kilometers. Runners and spectators are shuttled in from surrounding areas, even as far away as Denver, which is an hour's drive away. Boulder might be a well known place, but it’s really not that big: it covers barely more than 24 square miles.

Going for a Memorial Day Walk is a family tradition. We didn’t plan it that way, but it just happened that for a couple of consecutive years, on Memorial Day, my father just happened to fancy a stroll, and before we knew it, we would have wandered halfway across the city. Some years we were just on foot, others we had a bicycle along, or a pair of rollerblades that would get passed around between my brothers and I. Lincoln is quite a bit larger than Boulder, covering around 75 square miles, so it was usually quite a jaunt.

It may have been a longer walk in Lincoln than the run is in Boulder, but the effort involved is similar because of the difference in elevation. The Bolder Boulder online store sells a shirt that displays the fact that “Sea Level is for Sissies.” Boulder, in the shadow of the Rockies, is 5,430 feet above sea level, while Lincoln is only 1,176 feet above sea level. I asked my father whether he could feel the difference. “It was definitely dragging me down,” he replied.

He didn’t look tired at the finish. He rocked the last 200 meters or so with his arms up in the air, victorious. Unfortunately, he was too far away to hear my brother shout, “WE WIN!”

Best Memorial Day Walk (Run) ever.