This New Generation

Last night some neighbor kids were over hanging out.  A newly minted 5 year old stepped up to the piano to play us a tune.  She sat regally on the bench, flounced her hands out a little, then turned, eyed the 'crowd' and said, "Do any of you have cell phones???  Turn them off!"  Here she is, just a couple of hours into being five, and she's got the new drill down.
It reminded me of something that happened on our canoe trip down the Namekagon this summer with 8 of my most favorite kids.  We spent much of our time on the river tackling ye olde '2 minute mysteries'.  If you don't know what these are, they are kind of like glorified 20 questions.  Or gorified.  Because they almost all contain a story of death or dismemberment.  For example, the person in charge of the mystery might give out the line, "The music stopped and she died".  And then the solving crew has to ask yes or no questions to try to figure out how she died.  In this case it just so happens that she is a blind circus performer on the highwire and she knows that she is at the other end of the wire when the music stops, but some jealous co-worker wants her out of the picture and so stops the music early, she gets confused, stops, and falls to her death.  That is seriously the answer.  And the thing is that the questioners will get there.  It never fails to amaze me.  Another one starts with just these facts: "A man goes into a restaurant, orders an albatross sandwich, takes one bite, then jumps up, runs outside and kills himself."  Solve.  And they do.  Once you get into the groove with these you know what kind of questions to ask to get you to the (often grisly) conclusions.  But here's the thing about this new generation:  they have a whole new set of questions that they think to ask.  Such as, "Were there weapons of mass destruction involved?"  or "Did he use biological weapons?"  These questions, when posed by an innocent looking 8 year old lounging in a canoe in the middle of a fabulous wilderness, can be disconcerting.  And NO!  of course there are no WMD or biological whatevers, there are only ice cubes and shipwrecks and circus workers.  These mysteries were connocted in an more an innocent era, when murders were accomplished with icicles or umbrellas.  But now I feel like I've given too much away.

How are you people so calm???

On Sunday we were expecting our new foreign exchange student son to show up around 7:30.  Theo covertly kept a close eye on the front street starting around 6:15.  He'd walk by and do a sweep up and down the street, looking for the van with the "P.I.E." (pacific intercultural exchange) sticker on the side.  As the minutes ticked by he was amping up a bit, getting a little more touchy, and by 7 he was into his climbing mode- standing on the arm of the couch and then launching himself on unsuspecting parents as they walked by.  At 7:30 he finally broke, coming up to the windows, scanning, then turning toward me, grabbing my hands, looking in my eyes and yelling, "How are you people so calm?????"  Of course, I wasn't, I was also freaking out about this impending new development in our lives, but I wasn't brave enough to admit it like Theo.  But I didn't tell him that.  I just smiled and continued my own covert reconnaissance of the street.

Luckily Ildar arrived before 8 saving us all from nervous breakdowns.  And our first impressions make us think we are pretty darn lucky- he seems like a keeper.  And no rabbit allergy issues have surfaced as yet.  Of course, he's only been with us 24 hours, and has been gone at school and a volunteer gig for much of that- but still, it's looking like it might work.

Power Tripping

Our man Theo, at the tender age of 8, has been deputized as a crossing guard.  He has been issued all of the equipment- the orange flag, the velco-adjustable vest, the promise of hot chocolate on cold days.  And he is in love.  With the power.  And the perceived esteem increase he can leverage with this new position of power.  He was issued all of these items last Friday, the day of the big training with a real live cop.  Or at least a traffic cop- are they the same thing?  I always think of traffic cops as the junior varsity, but that might just be my own bias.  Anyway- when Jon's family came over Saturday for some celebratory birthday cake (Jon turned 41 and maybe almost looks 30 these days) Theo greeted them at the door, suited up, armed with the flag.  And I do mean armed.  It was lucky everyone left with all their appendages intact.   Look for him on a corner near you soon!

New brother on the horizon

No, Jon and I are not having another child.  But I think we just committed to hosting a foriegn exchange student for the rest of this school year.  I'm not real sure how it happened.  A woman who ferrets out homes for students in the area got our name somehow (no hard feelings, Amy....yet) and called late last Friday.  There's a kid from Russia who needs a new placement because he has allergy issues to the pets in the current home.  They need to place him somewhere quickly.  Can we do it?  I don't know!  Jon and I have never parented a 16 year old.  But we better figure it out soon because he will be here by Saturday.  In the meantime we need to convert our office to a bedroom and find places to shoehorn all that stuff into other corners of the house.  I did warn the woman that we do have rabbits and they do cause reactions in some people.  She said his allergies were only to cats and dogs.  Oh, and birds.  I suggested that he go to his local petstore and hug a rabbit or two to see if anything happens.  I don't think she passed this piece of advice along to him- so his stay here might be shortlived.  Because I did promise my boys that if he does turn out to have an allergy to the rabbits, we will work to find him a new home and will not foster out the rabbits.  Unless they keep chewing up the bookshelves- in which case I might reconsider.  Because even though I know very little about the parenting of a 16 year old, something tells me it will not have to include trying to train him away from chewing on the wood furniture.  But we shall see.  And soon.

Spreading his wings

Eli just returned from his annual backpacking trip with his dad.  The two of them tackled one more small section of the Superior National Hiking trail.  They apparently returned while I was out picking up Theo from a birthday party.  We pulled up behind Jon's car and saw that it was still loaded with all of the camping equipment.  I thought that Jon and Eli must be in the house- they must have had to go to the bathroom real badly or something.  But the door was locked and no one was inside.  We had no idea where they were.  It turned out that they had stiffened up on the drive home and got right out once they got home and went for a little stroll to loosen the muscles.  And to help Eli get his bearings in our neighborhood.  For some reason the week before was when Eli (finally!) started paying attention to where we lived in relation to other important landmarks- in Eli's eyes this means libraries or bookstores.  Apparently he and Jon spent much of their walk through the woods discussing how Eli would walk from our home to these places, sometimes stopping to make maps in the dirt with sticks.  And now that he was home he was eager to walk around and make sure he knew which way was what.  So that he could take off for these destinations on his bike.  Alone.

He was so eager to try it out that we said, sure, go ahead.  But first describe to us how you are going to get there.  He said, "Well, I'm going to go out to Snelling, then I'm going to go sideways for a little while.  Then I'll cross at that one street and go straight straight straight until I see the bookstore."  Ok, sideways then straight at that one place.  I'm feeling confident.  But we suited him up with a phone, he grabbed a few bucks in case something caught his eye at the store, was reminded to put on his helmet, and off he went to the garage.  A little swagger to his step if I must say. 

At that point I needed to call my mom for something else and I mentioned that Eli was off biking on his own.  She reacted immediately.  Notice I did not say OVER-reacted.  I am not one to judge.  But she brought up every possible danger- he's riding into the sun!  It's setting! (in 2 hours!)  The twins game just got out! Does he have a lock?   Oops.  We had set him up with everything else but a lock.  She implored me to hang up and get out there and follow him, on the sly if need be!  Jon and I talked it over and decided that Jon should meet him at the bookstore with a lock, but that Eli could return alone if he wanted.  He wanted.  And he did return, all in one piece even.  And he's eager to do it again.  The next time I won't call my mom....

Odd

Today I was down in the bowels of the Midway Y, in the over heated women's lockerroom, trying to change as quickly as possible from my work clothes to workout clothes so that I could squeeze in 30 minutes on a cardio machine before rushing off to release Granndma Sherry from the clutches of my children.  As I was sitting in the bathroom stall I could hear a woman on the phone that is attached to the wall next to the lockers.  It is not a dial phone- it is push buttons- but it is old fashioned and has an actual cord that connects the handset to the base.  Anyway- the conversation struck me as odd because she seemed to be doing some kind of travel agent type job.  She was asking for the spelling of someone's name and then talking about destinations.  I thought the women's lockerroom at the Y an odd place to be making some of your business calls, but I let it go.  Until I got out of the stall and saw that she was standing there at the phone, making her call, completely naked.  Except for her running shoes.  Now, it is warm in that lockerroom year round, but who ever finds themselves just in a pair of running shoes?  I mean, aren't shoes the first thing you take off and the last thing you put on, at least in most scenarios?  Even if there was some odd situation that would leave you just wearing your shoes and nothing else, what would cause you to decide to initiate a phone conversation on a public phone while in this state?  And what's more, this woman had no little notebook stashed anywhere so I don't know where she was taking her notes on the spelling of the name or the destinations desired by who I assume was a client on the other end.  The whole scene made me think that there must have been a candid camera crew around the corner.

I got home for dinner and told my boys about my odd sighting in the lockerroom.  Now, they are not so comfortable about talking with their mom about nakedness, but none of us could stop laughing over this women in her running shoes, doing a little business from the basement of the Y. 

"And I'm thinking to myself..."

Eli and Theo spent last week at daycamp out at St. Croix.  Eli is now old enough to be invited to sleep over on Thursday evening.  Thursdays are the 'parent nights' when families come out for a cookout and to watch the skits.  Despite the risk of being labeled a cynical bad parent, I will go on record as saying the parent nights are never my favorite.  Oh, I love seeing my kid on stage, but I can confidently say that those skits have been performed for well over 30 years.  They were already old when I was doing them as a camper.  And the cookout does have potato chips- but the rest of the fare is very uninspired.  When I was a counselor the family nights used to be potlucks and we looked forward to them all week!  Families brought much better food than that produced in the camp kitchen.  I still remember the spread of desserts with fondness.  But now we're so scared of litigation in case some gets food poisoning (this is a theme for me lately) that potlucks are becoming a thing of the past.

Anyway, back to Eli and his overnight.  On Wednesday evening over supper I was asking him if he knew anything about the upcoming overnight.  Here's his response:  "Yeah, they told us that when everyone leaves camp we will set up our tents, then play some games, then make s'mores.  And I'm thinking to myself, 'Malnutrition!  What kind of dinner is s'mores?'"  Then he broke out in a grin and said, "Clearly I forgot that it was family night!"  I kind of love the fact that his first thought, when faced with the prospect of s'mores for dinner was 'malnutrition!'.  My first thought was yum. 

Gretty Crocker learns some lessons

I was all swelled up and pleased with myself for cooking up some lovely pasta sauce and freezing it for the winter.  Until my plan to freeze it in glass jars backfired on me.  A friend, when trying to talk me through my distress of my love's labor lost, casually pointed out that glass and freezers are not usually close companions.  Straight away I remembered the coke bottle explosion from my youth.  Now, in truth, only one of my 8 jars exploded, and it wasn't that much of a mess because the sauce had already gotten real cold and solid.  But still, it was the largest jar and it hurt.  I was all for peeling the broken glass off of the frozen sauce and keeping it.  The sauce, not the glass.  But Jon convinced me that ingesting broken shards of glass might not be the best way to spend a quiet winter evening.  So I tossed it.  The other 7 jars remain untouched in the freezer.  I think that they have made it past the window when explosions are most likely, but time, I suppose, will tell.