Summer, I hardly knew ye

"They" say that today is to be the final gorgeous summer day, for a while. To celebrate, we met the Dalys at the park and picnicked. Except I ran out of time to find food for myself, so I subsisted on an apple and the peanut butter-honey drippings from the kids' sammies until I could get home and make myself what I am NOW eating, which is:

homegrown tomatoes, chopped
homegrown basil, shredded
fresh mozzarella balls, halved
kosher salt
balsamic vinegar

...and it is the bestest summer treat. And it's 80 degrees and sunny and I'm wondering if maybe I ought to start harvesting some of our 20-ish pumpkins in our patch? The vines aren't totally dead and I think they could still get a little deeper-colored orange, so I think I'm going to wait. But if anybody has any better expertise in this matter, I am listening.

And, did'ja catch that Twins game last night!? Hooo-eee, what a barn-burner! And it came on top of my coed team winning our two games, as well -- short-staffed though we were. Jean hit two triples (or a home run and a half, as she likes to say), Joel hit 2 home runs and I hit a single-with-a-three-base-error AND Larry The Homeless Man did not have to babysit the kids. It was a good night!

Tonight is opening night for High School Musical, and tomorrow Joel and I compete in the Great Urban Race in Minneapolis. We are still taking submissions for costume ideas -- so feel free to jump in with your thoughts. We have at our disposal several wigs (1 black afro and 2 blonde ladies' wigs), 2 1993 Monticello football jerseys, 1 1994 purple WSU dance team costume, an unlimited supply of Meg-sized fancy dresses, 2 pairs of ski goggles, and 2 adult-sized bell-bottomed 1970s spandex unitards, complete with sequins and maybe some fringe.

Well, I'll let you know how that all shakes out. Ciao for now...

See my show ON TV! KARE 11! Tuesday at 10pm!

Hey gang! Well, after a very emotional morning (the kids miss Joel. Big time. And I do too, stupid mustache and all) we finally made it (only an hour late!) to our playdate with the Watsons, where Mama Nicole let me cry and whine, and managed to tell me with a straight face that I was neither crazy nor a bad mama. For which I would like to now crown her Supreme Goddess of the Universe.

Now for the really random:

I rented Baby Mama (starring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, etc) for myself last night and MAN that is a funny movie! And very sweet and touching. And the commentary is excellent, so much so that I am going to watch the rest of it into the wee hours of tonight, if only I can ever pry myself away from this computer.

Dooce is right about edamame: it is the Vegetable of the Gods and now ranks in my Top 5... OK, Top 8 foods of All Time. Jean and I got some edamame from Pei Wei a couple weekends ago, and I'm SO glad for A. Dooce's informative tutorial video and B. the Pei Wei experience, so I knew exactly the preparation steps AND how the stuff ought to look and taste. The kosher salt is an absolute necessity during cooking, and don't forget to sprinkle it with more as you serve it. I also tossed it with a bit of olive oil, which gave it that ultimate salt-fat combo that makes my lips go all numb. Anyway, it was a total hit; even Joel and Lucy liked it, and I'm going to make it all the time.

When am I going to learn that when I'm real crabby, all I need is some exercise? I took my first en pointe ballet class last night (well... kinda. I have to go acquire some pointe shoes, now) and I broke a sweat for the first time in weeks (doing something other than brushing Ed's teeth, that is) and it felt wonderful. It's a great small group of gals and I am really excited to keep working.

Bummer is, I had to miss the filming of an Eric Perkins "Perk at Play" episode at High School Musical rehearsal tonight! Sounds like the kids will be on the 10:00 news tomorrow night (Tuesday, Sept 23) on Channel 11 (NBC) here. I can't wait to see how they all look! I heard they were working on the "Head in the Game" number so that would be so cool to see some of my choreography on TV. Mia Michaels, watch out -- har-dee-har-har. And I'm hoping it will be some great publicity for the show -- meaning, I hope they get the show info right and I hope lots of people buy tickets!

When I got home from ballet, Papa G and Ed were watching Ice Age (again) and Lucy had passed out on the couch. That is one tired little girl -- busy day for her, with playdate-ECFE-dance class all back to back. Tomorrow is our day of rest, I think. Uh, is it raining out?

OK I gots a date with Baby Mama.

Way to step up, people.

So I'm currently in a five-way tie for 48th place in the "favorite parenting blog" contest at Divine Caroline. I'm not going to lie to you, though: having to register there is a giant deterrent and I'm impressed I have even the 9 votes I do.

I haven't even voted for myself. :(



See, what I think needs to happen is, I need to get out of the "mommy blog" label and into the "Neighborhood/World" category, which has 1/3 of the number of nominees. MOST OF WHICH ARE MOMS! Cheating whores!! I'd be in the top 10 with my nine votes, there!!

Random convos around the house

Joel: "Eddie eats dirt."
Ed: "Eddie eats skirt?"
Lucy: "I've seen THAT movie!"


Lucy (singing a Veggie Tales song): "Pizza Angel, I'm on my knees... Hey, pickles don't have knees, am I right?"


Lucy (as I finish reading her a story from her new Jesus Storybook Bible): "Who's this story for?"
Me: "It's for you!"
Lucy: "Story for ME?!? Well, I LOVE it."


Me (after Ed had asked for something he couldn't have, like a cookie): "I'm sorry, no."
Ed: "I'm sorry YES."

Typing with a clubfinger

Or whatever... I have my right "tall man" (the doc said "I can tell you're a mom of little ones") taped to my right ring finger, in an attempt to heal said "tall man" from the mysterious injury I sustained trying to do a backflip back in June (the doc also said "Kinda old to be doing backflips, aren't we?" to which I took great offense). Tall man is not broken, which I kinda knew, but I bet there's something wrong with a tendon in there, or something, so I'm trying to immobilize it a bit to see whether it improves. So any grevious typos can be attributed to me typing with this strange clubfinger.

I'm going to make neither attempt nor promise to blog more regularly. The spirit moves me today, as Ed is taking a very late nap and Lucy is happily cutting-and-gluing away at her "desk" (read: whichever countertop or table surface she has currently appropriated). Also because it is such a unbelievably gorgeous late-summer day. Jean came over this morning to babysit while I went in for x-rays; we then played some tennis (thank you Lu and Ed for entertaining yourselves for a while!) and enjoyed a picnic lunch (thank you Lu and Jean for packing it!) and some playground time before hustling back home to head to ECFE for our first Thursday session.

Our ECFE schedule is bizarro this year, so I won't attempt to go into detail. But Thursdays are the days I get my "parent class" which is something I really look forward to. Since the class is a Kindergarten-prep class, today we started talking about school readiness and what it means. The teacher and my fellow parent-students reiterated how "readiness" cannot be measured by how well a child writes his/her letters, or by how high he/she can count, or other "academic standards" that modern preschools often, unfortunately, try to push upon families. (Modern families, so terribly busy as we all are, are susceptible to fall for these "easy measures" of how a child is developing. It's an easy way to compare kids: Darla writes all her letters, upper and lower case! Buford can add and subtract!) But rather, we need to take the time to consider the whole child: social, verbal, and emotional levels as well as an eagerness and excitement about learning.

Anyway, I'm gonna totally dig this class. Hurray!

So Lucy is painting on her easel out in the gazebo. She just hollered in "I made brown! I made it with red and orange and green!" And I looked out and, well, she sure did.

She was taking her "quiet time" today (which is often a struggle) in the living room, and I was trying to just get a little QT of my own, upstairs in my heavily-pillowed bed. She hollers, much to my dismay (as I am loving having my feet up and my eyes closed): "MOOOOOOM!" And when I holler "WHAT!?" back she hollers, "I LOVE YOU!" What a peach.

OK painting time is done and Ed needs to wake up. Did I mention it's a gorgeous day, and I am about as happy as it's possible for a human to be?

Uhh... some kind of nomination?

Well, I'll be honest: I don't really know what to think of this at all. Apparently I've been nominated for a "Love! This Site Award" through DivineCaroline.com.

I have never heard of Divine Caroline, and the "nomination notification" was delivered to my Spam file, but I did find it and it looks legitimate... in that it doesn't appear to be a bunch of criminals trying to scam any of us out of our hard-earned money.

Also I think they're giving away ACTUAL MONEY as a prize! And I pledge to you that, if I win anything, I WILL SPLIT IT WITH YOU in a completely arbitrary pro-rata system. I promise!! So vote for me!

EDIT: OK, while it's super-nice to be nominated, I'm already like 698 votes behind "Bring the Rain" and a couple other tearjerking blogs that are probably much more worthy. In addition, I can't for the life of me figure out how to post the "voting button" on my site. I stink at HTML and unfortunately so does everybody else I know. So I'll just say it's an honor to be nominated, thank you to whomever did it, and have a nice day!

Pix from Lu's bday

The infamous Doll Cake.

I made homemade spaghetti sauce and it was a FEAST.

Real short update: I have been thinking about Lucy and school, and Ed too, for one because it's back-to-school time, and second because our options just keep expanding. While I really don't see myself as homeschooling material, some mamas I really respect are going that route. And it's only been in the last year that I've realized that the St. Paul Public Schools are a very good option. I had totally ruled out private schools, but then I think thoughts that might make that possible. And Minnesota's open enrollment really throws the floodgates open.

So I came across this wonderful essay that I now paste here for your enjoyment.
http://www.magicalchildhood.com/articles/4yo.htm

Also! I bought a book, totally on a whim, for a friend's child's birthday. It's The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by local author Kate DiCamillo. I picked it up because of Ed's name in the title, and because I'd heard good things about DiCamillo, and because I thought a 5-year-old girl would like being read a chapter book about a bunny.

So I was flipping through it, because I love books, and of course there is a little dog in it named... Lucy. Sweet! And all this happened several weeks ago, but I just happened to plug "Kate DiCamillo Secret Edward" into Google (because I forgot the title and replaced "miraculous" with "secret") and I came up with some notes on how the story is an allegory of Christian faith and resurrection.

Who knew!? How cool is that? Say, do any of you know anything else about this book? Because now I totally want to get a copy and read it to my kids. Except apparently Ed the bunny actually gets nailed to a cross. Yikes.

And as though I didn't already get questions about my kids' names relating to the Lucy and Edmund in (Christian author) C.S. Lewis's Narnia series. Sooooo interesting.


Oh!! And the MOST FUNNEST news for you all!

Remember a couple months ago, I wrote a post entitled "Shed no tears for me..." ?? No? Well you can go look it up if you wish, but I'm warning you, it's no Shakespeare. Or even Margaret Mitchell. Anyhoo, the gal who inspired it found the post when she Googled herself, and she wrote a response! It turns out she's a fellow theatre geek (or she used to be)... a fellow mama... a fellow writer... a fellow skeptic of he WSU dance department. Anyway, you may read her very eloquent post here (http://kathrynslusher.blogspot.com/). I totally want to be her new very best friend in the whole world, but I may have made that a little too obvious as she hasn't replied to my invitation for coffee. Nor the dozen roses I sent. Nor the singing telegram, nor the dead fish I left on her doorstep, nor the urine-bombs thrown by the now-unemployed RNC anarchists. *sigh*

Lucy turns 4

Hey Lu! You turned four years old at 3:34 this morning. You were sleeping at the time, thank goodness, because you were suffering from a giant Grandparent Hangover after a very long and very wonderful Labor Day weekend. You woke up this morning at 7ish and hollered from the bottom of the stairs: "Mom, I'm FOUR!" It made me smile, and as you know I don't typically smile before I've had coffee. Good work. As I dismounted the stairs and congratulated you on 48 months of life, you told me you didn't really feel much bigger. I hope you're saying the same thing when you're 44.

Lucy, you are FUNNY. I wish I had tape-recorded our conversations in the grocery store today. You'd brought your own list, of course, which magically had lots of the same stuff that my list did, which is amazing considering the only letters you write really well now are O and L. And Y and C. I want you to know that our comedic dialogue regarding our competing grocery lists garnered LOTS of chuckles from passing shoppers and store employees. Lucy, lots of grownups don't laugh very often. You brought some joy to some people today.

Lu, this is the first birthday of yours that you've been truly aware of. You had a perma-grin on your face all day, and I was so proud and happy that we could make it a special day for you. I'm proud of the conversations you carried on with all your callers today: Grammy and Papa, the Bookses, and Ellen. You loved listening to Jamie's voice mail. You must have replayed over 100 times that e-card that Joel's Aunt Denise sent. I can't believe you figured out in, like, 10 seconds how to use the mouse pad on my computer. I seriously showed you once. (Tip to anyone wanting to delight a 4-year-old: send an e-card that they can click on for animation and music. Best Free Gift Ever.)

Lucy, I have so many dreams for you. I hope you stay kind and caring (it melts my heart when you bring Ed his magic blanket when he's sad). People notice kindness, and it is far too rare in our world. People notice when you're interested in them, too, and I know you'll learn different ways of asking about people besides "So, how was your day?" Which is actually not a bad start at all.

I hope you keep asking All Those Questions ("Mommy does Jesus love lions? Trees? Those wires running across the yard?"). As much as it infuriates me when you repeat my phrases back to me ("It's really not a good time for me." "I will do what you ask, as soon as I am able." "Mommy I'm just very frustrated with you right now."), I adore that you keep asking about the nuances of language and context. If you choose not to be any kind of performer (which will be a GIANT mistake, but who's asking me? I'm just the mother), you should know that your confidence, and your ability to talk to anyone about anything, will serve you well no matter where your life takes you. So will your creativity.

Lucy, I know we're going to butt heads for probably ever. We will be so lucky if we get to butt heads forever. Both your dad and I are stubborn... so you got a double-dose. Know that I think you and your brother are two of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. Know that I am hugely proud of the person you are becoming. When you do that Lion King show, complete with "welcome-to-the-show" curtain speech plus your very own singing, dancing, and stage-managing (whick mostly consists of you bossing Ed about where to carry Sad Puppy who's playing the part of Baby Simba), I just fall to pieces. I watch you lose yourself entirely in interpreting the music, and I admire your utter lack of fear or self-consciousness. I am amazed at the information you retain in that brain of yours -- trivia about the whereabouts of every single one of your toys, and the various dramatic plots you've got them involved in. I can always count on you to find things that go missing in the house -- well, except the keys that one time, and I kinda blame your dad for that.

Keep listening, Lucy, and keep learning. Watch closely to see how your words and actions affect people. Use your gifts for good, not for evil. Keep reminding me to be patient with you and Ed. And keep talking to me -- except not after 8:30 PM nor while I am cooking. I love you to pieces. Happy fourth birthday.

In fact I would despair, would you not take me to the fair

I just don't want to look back on my life and have regrets about NOT doing things. But I don't think that's going to be a problem.

Tuesday night we went back to the MN History Center for the ninth of their "Nine Nights of Music." They had an American Folk band playing and they had contra-dancing going, which is just a fancy word for what I would call square-dancing. It was easy enough to jam along to with the kids. They weren't much for the waltzing, but their do-si-do was a force to be reckoned with.

Joel took off work today so we could all go to the Minnesota State Fair. We saw mama pigs and cows in labor, and we got to pet an 18-hour-old calf named Belle. After several corndogs and an early total-meltdown by Ed (I think his two-ness is finally catching up with him -- he has these inconsolable fits of bawling a couple times a day. It's not a tantrum, it's just... sobbing. It's heartbreaking while remaining super-annoying.), the kids both rallied in time to ride the giant slide. We also rode the sky-ride, almost asked a question about "winterburn" on MPR, spied Al Franken, made some hats in the shape of the state of Minnesota, and saw some giant fish. It was REALLY fun and I suspect the kids' favorite part was riding the park-n-ride bus.

Oh, and bouncing in the Twins bouncy... until it started raining and they nearly deflated the thing right on top of Ed!

This is Belle:

Sharing a lemonade...

Come see my shows! Again!

I still want to encourage you to come see Guys and Dolls this coming weekend, if you are able. I'm insanely proud of this show and it's a fun, affordable evening of entertainment.

I also want to let you know that High School Musical is coming back to the Maplewood Commuinty Center! Ashland is restaging the show with some of the same cast and much (but not all) of the same choreography and staging as when we did it in March. We sold out every show in March. This time the cast is quite a bit smaller so the show will be tighter -- we've only had a few rehearsals but I'm super-excited about how things are pulling together. We've got some bright shiny new talent and I've had the chance to fix some of the dances I wasn't delighted with last time.

Anyway, so advance tickets are on sale now. Please let me know when you want to come, and how many seats you need, and I can get them for you for $3 off the regular ticket prices. Of course, now I can't find the ticket prices on the Ashland website... well, they're like $10-ish in advance and $13-ish at the door.

Guys and Dolls

Well thanks for checking back!

Guys and Dolls opens at the Maplewood Community Center (2100 White Bear Ave N) on Friday, Aug. 15 and runs through Aug 24 (next Sunday). You should come see it!

The kids (and all us grownups) have worked VERY hard on this show and it is really great. It's fun and funny with loads of good singing and dancing. You can buy tickets at the door -- they're only like $10. Some pix!

Fluffy's Master Plan For World Domination

...Soon there will be cats in charge of the nation

Whiskers will be used to transmit information

Meowing as a means of mass communication

So I'm sure nobody's reading this anymore, mostly because I told you not to. *shrug* I just wanted to let y'all know, because I have been getting concerned-sounding phone calls and emails, that everything is totally fine and wonderful here.

My internet connection has been really spotty -- similar to Delmon Young's leftfielding. So that's one excuse. Also, I just wanted a break, at least for the summer. Also, I feel like I'm spending too much time staring at the computer and not enough time cooking, cleaning, laundering and hanging out with the kids. Also I was feeling a kind of pull to journal, by hand, on a more personal level. Also I was feeling (self-imposed) pressure to turn out "finished pieces" here, and I just didn't want to do that regularly anymore.

But life is really great. The kids are HILARIOUS (they like to stand atop the retaining wall in our yard and shout in rhythm: "JOSEPH! I'll see you ROT in JAIL. The FINGS you have DONE are beyond the pale!" and then throw a rock or a stick over the wall, watching disdainfully as the offending piece of nature plummets into the prison of the lower yard. Oh, except Ed pronounces it "JOPHESS!"). Joel bought me a canoe for my birthday last week (and a big thank-you to everyone who thought to call/email). Jean ran Grandma's Marathon on June 21.

Happy summer everyone!

Permanent hiatus

Hey there; I'm hangin' it up for a while.

Thanks for reading!

The Polar Express Cookie

This recipe has been on the back of the last three boxes of raisins we've bought. Ed freaks out ever time he sees the logo, and Lucy finally convinced me to make the cookies.

I have to admit, raisins and chocolate sounded grody to me. I made a couple changes which I'll explain. The results were SUPER tasty and I will definitely make them again!

The Polar Express Cookie
adapted from the Sun-Maid Raisins box

1/2 cup butter or margarine (I used 1/4 c butter and 1/4 c applesauce)
1 & 2/3 c sugar (I used 1 cup white sugar and 1/3 cup "natural" sugar, thereby reducing the sugar by 20% and adding a really nice texture)
1 Tablespoon (no, really!) vanilla
2 oz (2 squares) unsweetened chocolate, melted
2 c. all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup all-purpose and 1 cup whole-wheat)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 c. milk
1 cup raisins
powdered sugar

Combine butter, sugar, and vanilla; beat until light and fluffy. Blend in chocolate. Combine flour, baking powder and salt; add to chocolate mixture alternately with milk. Stir in raisins.

Cover and refrigerate 1 hour until firm. Heat oven to 350. Grease cookie sheets. Shape dough into 1-inch balls; roll in powdered sugar. Bake in upper third of oven, 10-12 minutes; do not overbake!

Shed no tears for me; there'll be rain enough today

Ed likes to throw things, just to hear what kind of sound they make when they land. And the other evening he actually asked for his "cowboy pajamas" and when I told him they were dirty, and could he please wear his dinosaur 'jamas instead, he agreed. A couple minutes later I found him rifling through Lucy's pajama drawer, throwing things everywhere. And I said, "Ed, what on EARTH are you doing?"

Through his little tears he sobbed, "A dinosaur 'jamas instead!!"
He was looking for them.

And he LOVES to say who he is. Now that he's figured out that HE'S Eddie, and nobody else is. "I'm Eddie!" all day.

He also came up to me one morning, fully clothed, and said "A take off a shirt. A be nay-kay. A take off a biaper. I'm a naked data." I don't really know what that was all about.


I got my Winona Currents alumni magazine in the mail yesterday and there was an article on A Prairie Home Companion's broadcast from Winona State this February. Featured in the article is Kathryn Hauser Slusher, whose name and very-fuzzy-and-barely-visible profile I recognized from my days at WSU. When I read she'd been a dance minor, I realized I DID remember her -- she was in Dreamscape, the spring-of-1995 modern-dance show that I was cruelly coerced into doing... that I did not enjoy at all... that included Chris Badger rolling around on the floor with a 15-foot tree root to the song of the humpback whales... that drove a knife into my burgeoning love of dance and theatre.


Anyway, Ms. Slusher was in that show. I found her picture in my scrapbook this afternoon, along with the program with our names in it. I only barely remember her. But in this article, she spoke of WSU in glowing terms.

Note that this gal has something akin to my dream job: working at APHC.


And it occurred to me that I've spent lots of brainpower recently maligning Winona State, or at least my experience there. I received a degree in a field I don't care ever to work in again, and I have a good friend and former classmate who had to learn the hard way that WSU wasn't prestigious enough to get him into the grad school of his choice. I spent way too much time having fun and way too little time appreciating the education I was receiving, at the price I was receiving it.


I felt mostly unmentored and uncounseled there. I have a passion for helping people, for teaching, for service... but I didn't discover any of those things until long after I graduated... after it was too late to take advantage of the scholarships I'd been receiving, and get a degree in a field in which I have true interest.


I have felt that some of my time there was wasted remaining uninvolved in theatre, in part because Winona is not a hotbed of musical theatre performance. Or at least I didn't seek it out. I regret missing out on some of my potential and I have been blaming, in part, Winona State.


But I read Kathryn Slusher's words, and I realized how ungrateful I'd been. I've long heard that it's not what happens to you in life, but how you react to it, that makes the difference. I understood the concept but just wasn't really applying it to myself. Well, I get it now. I was sort of feeling... well, "victimized" is WAY too strong a word, but I was feeling somehow wronged by my choice of college.


Now obviously that is ridiculous. I met Joel at Winona, as well as some of my very best friends in the entire universe. I DID get a degree, and while I don't care if I ever work in that field again, and while YES it makes me a little wistful when I realize I'm never going to be a paleontologist or a doctor or a licensed teacher or a Broadway dancer or a large-animal veterinarian or even a college professor... I can indeed choose to embrace the positives. The very big, weighty positives which make up my life right now -- not the least of which is this little life that Joel and Lu and Ned and I carve out daily.


The lead article in today's Pioneer Press Daily Life section is about "feeling slighted" and I feel that here is one thing I can do to make the world a more peaceful place.

I can choose how I feel and how I react.

I can sulk, or I can decide sulking is a waste of time.

I can allow things to offend me, or I can let it roll off my back. Better yet, I can try to figure out what was meant by the "offender" because most likely it had very little to do with me.

I can wallow in self-pity or I can forge my own path.

So that's that! Oh, the title of this post is the first line of "Stranger to the Rain," a beautiful song from Children of Eden by Stephen Schwartz. That song came to me in a couple weird ways last week, and I felt it was trying to tell me something. It's about not crumbling in the face of adversity.

In other news, the Hastings HS gig is going great -- except in true Meg form, I may have made the dances a *teeny* bit too complicated. I'm going to have to go back next week, which means securing a nanny for a couple hours on a couple mornings. *Shrug* Calling Grampa Books...

I acquired some plants at the ECFE plant sale last Friday. I know, I KNOW, I hate plants! I hate how they don't cry when they are hungry! I hate how they die just to spite me! But there were a couple "leftovers" after the pre-orders were filled: orphans in need of some love. I took 'em home with me. A couple coleus, some impatiens, some tomatoes and basil, and some "walking green onions." And something white I can't pronounce or spell. I don't have real pots to put them in, and I know I can't put them in the ground until Thursday and even then I might hesitate because it's only like 40 degrees out right now! And, like, I have sooooo much free time to spend repotting plants. Arrrgh, what was I thinking?

Introducing Ms. Sportiquette

I'm not *quite* ready to do this (though it's been in the pipeline for almost a year!), but I seriously can't wait another minute.

I've been hearing lots of sad news lately. I've been following lots of very sad stories, very eloquently told: miscarriages, sick babies, sick parents, untimely death, loss, and suffering.


It gets overwhelming. I've spent time weeping in front of my computer recently. And there's a time for that.


But I also believe there is a time for laughter and levity. And without taking anything away from the struggles of these families, I want to offer a place for some fun. Now, I don't know about all of you, but I equate "fun" with sports and games and athletic events and activity and fitness.


So... have you been in attendance at an athletic event, and questioned any of the protocol and/or proceedings? Do you play sports and have a pet peeve about others' behavior? Do you wonder what's with rally-scoring in volleyball? How female gymnasts keep from getting wedgies? Do you have an opinion about football pants?


Ask Ms. Sportiquette!


Your place to ask any and all sports-related questions. Email 'em in, or call me if you can dig up my number. No new questions = no new posts! Don't be shy!

Mr. Ryan Goes To Washington

I knew I'd forget something.

My uncle Jim (my dad's brother) is biking from Chicago to Washington, D.C. all by his lonesome (well, my dad and uncle Dan are keeping him company but not biking). Jim is raising money forthe tuition assistance program at his parish school, St. Robert Bellarmine. Follow his progress here  at jr2dc.blogspot.com.

Horse heaven

I got a call on Friday morning from the choral director at Hastings High School -- it's a choreographic emergency!! The HHS choral program has, apparently, 600(!) kids... and a show in less than 4 weeks. So I spent much of my weekend inventing dances to six different choral medleys.

Jean and I went on a 4-mile run together on Saturday and I rollerbladed with her for a 12-miler on Sunday. Over the course of the weekend, we also caught two shows (Seussical at St. Jude's and Footloose at Hill Murray), tried out the new Jimmy Lee indoor water park in St Paul (I can still do a forward 1.5, and a back flip, off the diving board! I've regained my youth!), watched the Derby (and fielded dozens of questions from Lucy about poor Eight Belles), went to church, went to the Petersons' for lunch, prepped for a dance class that didn't end up happening, and made a flurry of phone calls lining up babysitters for the next couple weeks. Whew!

I've got to get Lucy to dance class -- she and Eddie are playing some weird pretend game in their room right now, and all I can hear are very insistent choruses of "Mommy!" to which I (of course) reply "What?" before getting back "No -- COW Mommy!" I guess I'm not expected to answer to that.

Then a few moments later I hear "My daddy is DEAD." Time to go talk about the horses again, I think.

Beautiful to banal in 2.2 seconds

If you ever need reassurance that maybe this world isn't such a bad place after all -- and who couldn't use such reassurance? -- I highly recommend holding a crying baby in your arms and soothing it to sleep.

I had the honor of doing that twice today (and it's just barely 2pm!) -- first to a beautiful almost-5-month-old named Rosemary (at ECFE), and just now to my own baby Ed.

Watching the peace and beauty of a little person surrendering to a much-needed nap -- it's a very powerful thing. Being able to take the time to be a part of that experience -- that's a very humbling blessing.

Lucy was eating breakfast this morning, and mentioned some little boy she saw yesterday.

"He can burp his ABC's," she reported, "and that's adorable."