Olympic Day

Today was Olympic Day at Grace's school, which she's been looking forward to pretty much since September when we bought the t-shirt which you see on every kid at her school in the photos at left. It was a huge improvement on what used to be called Track and Field, back in [my] day: there were a bunch of different and cool stations through which the classes rotated, and kids could opt out if they wanted, and they weren't competitive or even all athletic in nature. We'd be warned that the expectations were high regarding lunch, so I did the honors and brought Panera Bread for a picnic, and we joined hundreds of other kids and parents spread across the school grounds and happily ate. I picked up Peter a bit early and we attended the closing ceremony, which (oddly, to my ear) involved a heartfelt rendering of "God Bless the USA" and a speech thanking our armed services, while students waved their American flags. And then the Olympic theme song, and the (faux) torch got carried around the parking lot, the kids each took the flag of the country their class has been studying all year and marched behind it back to their classrooms, and the day was done. Grace loved it all - the ceremony, the fun games, the matching t-shirts, lunch with mama, the noise and the marching around. Peter was somewhat overwhelmed by the noise (sometimes irony strikes, and it is funny!) and the big kids and the orchestrated activity, but he had a pretty good time. It's fun to see him taking ownership of the school where he'll start kindergarten in a few months - he told Grace pointedly that this was only his *first* Olympic Day, and it's true.

Sometimes, it's a two-corn-dog day.

So, reports from the mama-kid trenches (so described since Daddy is gone, and was gone before, and is going to be gone again, and our hygene has remained good but everything else is going downhill - bedtime, laundry, dishes, etc.): Peter firmly maintains that zombies are made from chickpeas. And when a zombie finds a person, he or she turns that person into chickpeas, a bowl of chickpeas, with a spoon. And that's how baby zombies get to eat! This might or might not be connected with the word of the day at preschool having been "falafal" recently. Another WODD was "palindrome," and Peter announced to me during church on Mother's Day, "Mom! Poop is a palindrome! Also Mom!" Um... good. So, yeah, chickpeas. Peter prefers corndogs, himself, but (shh! don't tell!) we actually buy the vegetarian corn dogs my colleague recommended, and now they're the only kind he likes. Mmmmmm.... vegetarian, organic, fake corndog. Sometimes as breakfast, sometimes as a snack, sometimes ... both in one day.

Grace is in the midst of "bring every possible stuffed animal you own to school in rotation" days at school, which is a little like Take Your Child to Work Day, except probably more fun for the child. We're in the beginning of reading aloud a favorite novel from my own well-spent youth, White Ghost Summer, which is I think set in the early post-WWII era but doesn't have any of the stuffy and over-mannered quality of other fiction I remember from that time frame. It's delightful, and always good to renew one's pleasure in a book from childhood with, you know, one's actual child.

Both kids are thrilled with our veggie garden, and I sent Peter out a day or two ago to shoo a bunny out of the backyard. He came through with such enthusiasm that I'm sure the neighbors all got word that we had a RABBIT! in our GARDEN! We've kept the gates shut since then, and no tomatos appear to have fallen prey. Our next job is to plant the cosmos and sunflowers they're growing inside, as soon as I have the twenty minutes required for the job. Probably Saturday.

It's my last week of teaching, and I'm both so glad to be done with this long first year and sad to see so many of my students graduate. I spontaniously promised donuts to my 31-person MWF a.m. class on Friday, and they were pleased and I was pleased and it sounds like fun. My colleague and I had a good meeting over lunch today about our official description of the goals for our students, around which my courses for the fall should be shaped, so I'm excited to work on those syllabi. (We also planned that our next meeting ought to be a cookie meeting, since there's a coffee shop/bakery in town that is apparently really good.) I was nominated for Teacher of the Year by at least one student, (along with I have no idea how many other professors) which is heartwarming and nerve-wracking all at once. I had to submit a teaching philosophy of no more than one page to the student senate, and apparently the award is announced at commencement. (My submission included the observation that in every course, students teach me something I need to know - totally true - and a description of myself as "embarassingly uncool" - also totally true.)

A shirt arrived in the mail today that I ordered through the online running group I belong to (awesome advice-givers, cheerleaders, comiserators, and general sources of wisdom.) I'll try to take and post a picture that gives you some sense of it - the slogan is "Run Like a Mother" which makes me feel fierce and giggly at the same time. It's cool, and I'm excited.

Spring planting and blooming

We're having the fun of discovering what grows in our yard, and of adding in both flowers and vegetables as we see fit. So far we have five blooming trees - three lilac, one crab apple, and one snow crab that we rescued from an unfortunate planting situation. (In brief: if you're going to plant a tree, you must dig a hole. Really. Even if you see trees that have mulch mounded up around them such that it looks like they're more or less just plunked on the ground with soil heaped around them - no. This is not how to plant a tree. There's just no way around it: you must dig a hole.)

In flower news, we have peonies that are doing well, zillions of tiger lilies, daylilies everywhere, purple coneflower taking over the place, and a bunch of stuff we haven't yet identified. Some surprises: phlox in various hues of pink and purple; some hyacinth that probably need to be relocated; and really, really healthy rhubarb. (We've given away two big batches already and have had one rhubarb crisp and used rhubarb as ice cream topping. And it's early May!) Upcoming: more on the insane veggie garden we're planting.

Run, Mama, run...

An astonishing number of people today had signs saying "Run, [whomever], run!" This seemed strange to me, and slightly passive-agressive somehow, because - what, we needed reminders? It's a footrace. We've got *numbers on our torsos.* But then someone's sign near the end said "Run, Forrest, run!" and I finally caught the Forrest Gump reference, and mystery solved.

So Mama ran, and did pretty decently for the first half-marathon. It was hot, and hilly, and I still was within my target time by several minutes. The most fun moments were finishing the hills around mile five, feeling good still, meeting Dorothy and Renata around mile seven, and really from mile nine on was pretty decent all around. I averaged about an 11 minute/mile pace, which sounds slow, but worked out well over the long run. (Hah!)

People were pretty upbeat, there were tons of water stops where you had to all but defend yourself from eager water-purveyors, and one amazing woman around mile ten stood on the sidelines and said to the runners passing her, "You look so beautiful! You look great! You're doing so well!" and I got a little weepy because she had Track Coach Authority, and I felt beautiful and like I was doing great and like things would be Okay. Which they were! I sprinted the last 100 yards or so, wobbled off into the chute, wolfed down a banana, a bagel, and still and yet more water before Renata and Dorothy nabbed me at the place for meetups. After figuring out that we were stuck in a massive traffic jam because of all the closed streets, we had lunch at an Irish pub and then came home. I took the world's nicest tub and actually feel pretty good.

Renata took some "before" pictures, like the above, and some "during" pictures which are about what you'd expect, minus the momentarily confused guy on the right. We skipped the "after" for reasons of dignity. She was a total trooper, shuttling me around all day from start to middle to finish, and I am so glad to be here doing this fun thing.

I'm a pirate!

Peter had quite the pirate crew over for his birthday... we had a treasure hunt (for pirate booty), a pirate pinata (filled with more pirate booty), and a cake (decorated with Transformers, for reasons that remain unclear to me.) We now own pirate hats, a Jolly Roger flag for just in case, and many more legos and Star Wars guys. Even Mama dressed like a pirate, which it says something when you can whip up a pirate costume from things you already own (black kerchief for a hat, admittedly borrowed from kids, boots decorated with skulls, skirt and t-shirt, and that's about it, but I was piratey.) It came as an ironic blow that there were actual pirate stories on the NPR this last week, involving not-funny pirate antics and anti-pirate heroism. We're vintage pirates, not contemporary pirates, and that makes us cool rather than all vicious and terroist-affiliated. Until Talk Like A Pirate Day (September 19th)... arrrr, ye skurvy sea dogs.

Birds, and how.

So watch: I'm going to be all thematic and stuff.

First, we took the kids yesterday to an event at one of the local nature centers where they could see a bird of prey up close (a rough-legged hawk, this time) and hear a little talk about her. We like this kind of thing, such that it turns out each kid actually has a toy bird of prey to bring along for the fun. Grace's is a perigrine falcon and Peter's is a great horned owl (identified by the nature center expert) that used to be Mike's. We saw a turkey vulture as we were driving up that was, frankly, the biggest damned bird I've ever seen. {alert readers: now we're doing a transition. Yes, I'm finding myself teaching a lot of writing basics these days; why do you ask?}

Speaking of birds of unusual size, I had a thing happen to me today that wasn't quite my fault, but it felt as though it was a confluence of events that could be traced back to me. Let me describe it in order of phenomena observed. 1. That Christmas wreath on the side of the house could really stand to be swapped out for a pretty spring one! 2. We're ready for church but don't need to leave for a few minutes - how about I do that now. 3. Oh look, some bird poop under the wreath. 4. Holy $*#&! There's a bird nest! Oh, Jesus: I have just spilled baby birds and unhatched eggs onto the deck chair where I carelessly laid the wreath. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Birdies. Holy goodness, they're tiny [!!!] and totally vulnerable and you're not supposed to touch them, right? 5. Reinforcements arrive, in response to my incoherent shrieking about having murdered baby birds, and calmly scoop teeny birds (3) and eggs (2) back into the next and affix the damned wreath back onto the wall. 6. I mourn all through church about being a murderer of teeny birds. The kids are largely unworried and reassure me that the mommy will come back, perhaps because that's the kind of mothering they're accustomed to - I may bitch a lot, but I don't up and desert them. 7. When we get back from church, we confirm that the mommy bird has indeed returned, and all is well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. No photos of the tiny birds, though. They prefer to recuperate anonymously. Although we may sneak a few pictures as they get bigger.

Finally, Easter eggs, which... wait for it... come (as you might be aware) from birds! We got them at the grocery store, though, and dyed them up right pretty. The kids each did six, we managed to spill only one container of dye on the hardwood floors, and they produced a lovely rainbow of eggs, which the Easter Bunny obligingly hid while we were at church worrying (or not) about the fate of our teeny robins. The egg hunt was good fun and the plastic eggs filled with chocolate were almost as popular as the real eggs. One real egg was overlooked, our careful accountants noted its absence and set out to find it and restore balance to the universe, and were successful, at least egg-wise.

In which it is spring again!

So it's plants, plants, plants at our house - the ones I ordered have come in the mail, the ones already growing have begun to emerge from underneath the mulch of last fall's leaves, and we planted some seeds in our teeny terrariums. Peter chose sunflowers, Grace chose cosmos, and I'm hoping we get a good transplant success rate. We did lots of raking and uncovering today, and noted which trees and shrubs are budding - the trumpet vine is particuarly pretty, and Grace gave it a little pep talk. Tomorrow I'm going to plant the various things that came in the mail (only one casualty there) and hope that we don't get (another) late snow. I was reflecting today on how little I got to enjoy our garden last year - we moved in July, so I spent the month between moving in and starting work unpacking, prepping my syllabi, arranging afterschool care, and orienting myself and the kids to our new neighborhood. This year I get spring - lots and lots of new plants to make friends with, open spaces to fill in, larger plans to draw up, a vegetable garden to put in, and (blessedly) the time off from work to accomplish all that.

Next up for the blog: Peter's birthday party pictures (pirates!) and a report on tomorrow's long run (aiming for 12 miles, since my half marathon is coming up soon and my running has been a little off for the past two weeks.)