I keep meaning to blog this

So did I ever tell you guys that I was running for a position on the school board? Well, I did run, and I got a spot, and my fellow new members and I were sworn in at the May meeting:

Blogging from my Louisville office

For the past 2 weeks, Annabelle has been participating in the summer session of Broadway Boot Camp up here in Louisville. Fortunately, one of our neighbors is also attending, which has allowed us to trade off driving.

For the first couple of days, I was all about the shopping. Soon though, it became obvious that I needed a way to get some work done while I'm up here, so I started bringing my clunky old laptop computer along. I discovered that Heine Brothers Coffee on Frankfort Avenue has free wireless, so I have adopted it as my home away from home.

When it's my turn to drive, I drop the kids off at their program and then set up shop at Heine Brothers. Yesterday I worked for most of the morning and then took myself to the movies. Today I think I'll hang out here for a couple hours and catch up on my bookkeeping and write an article that I've been putting off for weeks, and then I'll take myself out for one last shopping extravaganza.

Boot Camp ends this weekend. I will miss my coffee-shop office, but I won't miss the drive!

Caution: Squirrel crossing

I don't usually blog twice in one day. Heck, these days I seldom blog twice in one week. But I just had the most unusual thing happen to me, and I have to share.

I got run over by a squirrel. Fred and I were taking Ginger on her nightly walk, when she took off running after the sqirrel. I was standing between him and a tree, so he ran at me, full tilt, and sprinted between my ankles and dashed up the tree. On his way through, he smacked his head into one ankle and kind of scratched me lightly with his scrabbly little claws. Believe it or not, being head butted by a squirrel kind of smarts!

A most unfortunate evening

A couple weeks ago, Fred and I took Annabelle up to Louisville to hear Daniel Handler speak at a writers' conference. Handler is better known among her age-group as being "Lemony Snicket," author of the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Annabelle is a huge fan, so she was very excited to have the opportunity to meet him.

After he spoke, he signed his books. The event handlers had said that he would NOT be personalizing the inscriptions, but he did. It made the line move slowly (took us over an hour and a half to get to the front), but it was really nice how he took the time to chat with everybody in turn.

He is a rather strange duck, snide but so very funny. When Annabelle's turn came, he asked her how it was working out for her, having me as a mom. She said it was going pretty well, and I started motioning for her to move closer to him so that I could get a picture of the 2 of them together. He told her: "I don't like your mom. She seems bossy." I might be bossy, but I got my picture:



Annabelle took an extra book with her to get it signed for her friend Maya, who is a huge fan. He signed it "to an alleged friend," since--as he said--he really couldn't tell since she wasn't there. It was very dim in the room, so the video didn't really turn out, but if you click this link you can listen to his conversation with her about that. It's pretty funny.

So now Annabelle has spoken with Lemony Snicket and sat on J.K. Rowlings' fence. Those are a couple of the biggest names in children's literature today!

Philadelphia story

Well, those goofy rodents missed the flight to Philly. We were halfway to the airport last Thursday when we realized that they weren't with us. We assumed that they had opted to spend a quiet weekend at home. Fortunately, Snickers was along and was willing to work extra hard.

I had indexing meetings Thursday afternoon and all day Friday, so Fred took the kids (and Snickers) around to see the sights:



Thursday night we planned on making our obligatory visit to the local Hard Rock Cafe, but alas, when we got there it was closed for a private party. The kids were pretty tired, having spent the afternoon hiking all over town, so we just headed for the Olive Garden and called it a day.

Friday night we went out to dinner with some of my indexing friends. We asked the concierge to make reservations for us, and we wound up at this really cool Mexican restaurant called Tequila's. We didn't actually HAVE any tequila though, as we opted to share a pitcher of sangria.

I blew off Saturday's meetings so that I could play tourist, too. We started off at the Liberty Bell:



From there we moseyed over to the Betsy Ross house, where we met a gentleman in period dress. I asked him if he would hold Snickers for a picture, and he said, "Well, we're really not supposed to, but I will." I said no worries and asked instead for a picture of him with the kids while Annabelle held Snickers:



Afterwards Mike was asking why the colonial dude wouldn't hold Snickers, and I said that I thought it was probably because it would be an anachronism, like George Washington with a cell phone. "Maybe," Mike sniffed disdainfully, "but I am pretty sure that if somebody had offered George Washington a stuffed anteater, he would have accepted it."

Here is a bloggy bonus for you! I don't often post pictures of myself, mostly because I am usually the one holding the camera but also because I seldom see a picture of myself that doesn't make me cringe. But Fred took this one of me with a stone cat in the courtyard of the Betsy Ross house, and I think it's kind of nice:



After the Betsy Ross house, we stopped at a t-shirt shop so that Mike could get a shirt in some color other than black in hopes that it might help him stay a little cooler in the sweltering heat. He chose the anti-black, Pepto-Bismol pink:



Saturday afternoon we were joined by my friend Gretchyn and her daughter Alex. (You may recall that Gretchyn and Alex visited us in Europe in November 2004 while Fred was deployed.) We grabbed a bite of lunch and then went to Independence Hall for a tour:



Gretchyn is one of a number of moms I have been communicating with for years via an online message board. These are my "invisible" friends, and I love having them as close as the nearest keyboard no matter where in the world I may go. We had a real-life meet-up of some of these friends Saturday night when we went to City Tavern.

We were quite a crowd! Besides the 4 of us and Gretchyn, her husband Troy, and Alex, we had Deana and her husband Steve, Evey, and Laurie. We sat girls on one end of the table, men and children at the other, and laughed all night long. Unfortunately there is no photographic proof of this meet-up in which everybody looks reasonably good, so you will just have to take my word for it.

Sunday was our last day in Philly and the day that we had saved to visit the anteater at the zoo. We had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe and then took the bus out to the zoo. I got to spend more time with my invisible friends, as Deana joined us with her kids and so did Jodi and her family. I was able to get a decent picture this time (that's Julianna--Deana's eldest--making bunny ears behind her mother's head):



Naturally, the first exhibit we visited at the zoo was the noble anteater. Unfortunately, he was nowhere to be seen. This could have put a distinct damper on the mood, as not every zoo has an anteater and we make it our business to see them whenever possible. Julianna's favorite animal, the red panda, was also MIA, and after the initial jolt of disappointment had worn off, the girls were able to make jokes about how the animals had ditched the zoo and gone to the mall to get out of the heat.

At the end of the afternoon, we made one last visit to the anteater exhibit, where Snickers was thrilled to meet up with one of his Philly relatives:



In fact, he was so thrilled that he didn't want to leave, even though the zoo was closing:



We were halfway across the 34th Street bridge when the bus we needed to be on pulled away from the bus stop. Fred got hustled for some bus tokens and a few dollars, and I decided that I really didn't want to hang out on this street corner waiting 45 minutes for the next bus. So we did the only logical thing and started walking. We passed by the playground that was in the intro to the TV show "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," and Mike wanted to stop for a picture. About that time though, I stepped over a used hypodermic syringe, and the urge to stop for photo ops drained away.

We made it to the Museum of Art before the next bus came along. If you're not familiar with Philadelphia, let me just assure you that that is ONE LONG HIKE!

From there, we went back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, took a cab to the airport, ate supper, and then sat on our plane for over an hour waiting for the thunderstorms to go away. Needless to say, it was very late when we finally arrived back at Fort Knox. It had been a wonderful trip though!

Oh, remember the rodents and their nice, quiet weekend? Apparently it was one nonstop party:

Taking our rodents on the road

We're off tomorrow for Philadelphia. I'm going for the annual meeting of the American Society of Indexers, and Fred and the kids (and the rodents) are going to play tourist. Saturday night I'm getting together with a group of my invisible friends for supper, and on Sunday we're going to the zoo to visit the anteater. (Not a lot of zoos have them, so we like to see them wherever we can. Snickers looks forward to seeing his extended family.)

That's all I've got for you right now. Some idiot booked us on a flight that leaves at 6 a.m. (oh, wait--that was me), so we need to get packed and get to bed.

Why don't you go to Rodents on the Roof instead? I hear the Rodentia Red Carpet Awards were a scream.

Brava!

Shortly after we moved to Kentucky, my mom gave us her piano. It sat in our sunroom, mostly unnoticed by all, until sometime this past winter, when Annabelle decided that she wanted to learn to play "Für Elise." Interestingly enough, this was the same piece that sparked my interest in piano back in junior high, and just as I did all those many years ago, she worked it out over the course of several weeks, measure by painstaking measure.

A few weeks ago, she came home from school with big news. Her school was going to have a music recital at the end of the year: Fourth-graders would play recorders, fifth-graders would play xylophones, and she--she explained excitedly--was one of a handful of sixth-graders who had been asked to play piano!

Last Tuesday was the big night. She looked so grown up in her new dress and shoes (heels!) bought just for the occasion:



She did a wonderful job on her piece and enjoyed the applause immensely:

End of the trilogy

I have mentioned on here before the kitty-cat hospice my parents had found themselves running over the past few years when most of their cats got old all at once. We figured up the other day that Mom had been shooting insulin into one cat or another twice a day for the better part of 2 and a half years. The kitty hospice closed its doors last week with the passing of Lucy.

A couple of days before my wedding, almost 17 years ago, Mom and I drove over to Ormond Beach to pick up her second mother-of-the-bride dress from the tailor's. On the way there, Mom (who was NOT in the market for another cat) just happened to mention that her next cat was going to be an orange one. Well, the tailor's shop just happened to be next to a pet shop that just happened to have a fresh litter of kittens, and one of those kittens just happened to be the cutest little ball of orange and white fluff we had ever seen. One thing led to another, and the next thing we knew we were taking Lucy home to join in the wedding festivities.



Lucy truly had one of the most pleasant dispositions of any cat we've ever had. In her younger days, she was also quite spry, and if you listen to the laughter in this brief video clip, you can see that she brought our family a lot of happiness:



Rest in peace, sweet Lucy.

The forgotten celebrity

Last week I forgot to mention the one famous person we saw at Derby. I have to admit that I didn't know who this person was and had to ask the girls in the next box, who were fairly writhing with excitement. I'll post the picture here, and we'll see if any of my readers can identify the mystery celeb:



Anybody?

Weekend(s) update

I was so busy last week getting Derby and the talent show blogged that I completely forgot to mention what we did on Sunday. And now here we are at the end of another busy weekend, and I'm just getting further and further behind, so I think I will just do one long post to get you caught up.

Last Sunday we took the kids down to Bowling Green to see a production of the play "Wait Until Dark," performed in a tiny community theater that maybe sat 100 people. It was almost like being right there in the apartment with poor blind Suzy Hendrix and her psycho friends! We made the journey because "Wait Until Dark" is one of Annabelle's favorite movies, and she wanted to see the play, which just doesn't get performed that often anymore. The cast did an excellent job, and it was worth the extra hour we had to wait since I had forgotten that Bowling Green is in Central Time while we are in Eastern. Duh!

This weekend began for me yesterday at the crack of dawn, since I had to be at the Red Cross at 7:00 to help out with registration for their road race. I had lots of fun hanging out with my friends and handing out numbers and T-shirts. During the race itself I got to ride around in a golf cart, first with my friend Cathy and then with Fred (after he and Mike finished the 5K), handing out water and checking up on runners. It was kind of like disaster relief except that while the people receiving our assistance were terribly grateful, they really weren't that bad off in the grand scheme of things.

Fred and Mike did the 5K together in 26 minutes and change. After the race, the Shoney bear was hugging kids, so Mike got in line. I'm sure that sweaty 6-foot tall teens weren't what the Shoney bear had in mind, but the bear was a good sport:



After the race, we had to run home to shower and get presentable for the OCSC scholarship ceremony over at the Leaders Club. A couple months ago, I applied for the Mary Cherry scholarship, which is given to an OCSC member who is active in the club and in the Fort Knox community. I was deeply honored to be chosen to receive the award this year:



Late yesterday afternoon, Fred and I took Ginger up to Louisville to watch a disc-dog competition put on by the Flying Houndz of Louisville. I was eager to take advantage of a socialization opportunity for Ginger, who can be somewhat of a doofus when she meets new people and needs all the practice she can get.

Ginger seemed to enjoy herself. She sniffed a few butts and played with a Yorkie named Max. This picture is very blurry yet strangely accurate, as this is indeed more or less what their encounter looked like:



If you prefer a brief video clip of the action, you can click here.

After Max moved on, Ginger just hung out with us on our blanket and enjoyed the compliments from passersby who wondered "What kind of dog IS that?" Here she is (along with Fred's feet) just chilling out:



Today we have enjoyed a very laid-back Mother's Day. We started off with blueberry muffins for breakfast and then spent the rest of the day taking care of piddly little chores that sit around for ages without getting done, like wrapping up a gift that needs to go to the post office and finding a place to recycle the bazillion and one run-down batteries I had accumulated in my desk drawer. It feels good to get a lot of little tasks scratched off the to-do list!

I hope you have all had an enjoyable Mother's Day!

Proud mom of one-tired boy

Fort Knox High School had a student talent show today. Mike entered with his madd juggling and unicycling skillz . . . and won first prize!

Some parents save for college. And some of us prepare our offspring to run away and join the circus:

Let's talk Derby

WHAT a weekend! Derby surpassed all my expectations and will go down as a high point of our time here in Kentucky.

As you know, I had anguished quite a bit over my choice of hat. A week before Derby I had settled on the fourth hat I had bought, but I knew it needed to be jazzed up. I happened to go into Dee's Crafts in Louisville and found myself in hat-making heaven. Dee's has a full staff of designers on hand to give assistance ranging from selection of materials to actually assembling the finished product. I selected my hat decorations and took them home to assemble myself, but I have glue gun anxiety, and it took me a full week to get up the nerve to start sticking stuff to the hat.

I wished that little birdies would come help me out like they did for Jennie in the Ezra Jack Keats book Jennie's Hat:



Alas, no birdies came to help. AND as it turned out, my flower was impervious to glue, so I wound up stitching that sucker on at the last minute. All in all though, I think it came out well (the green feather was a perfect match for my shoes):



We arrived at Churchill Downs in time for the first race of the day (the Derby is actually the tenth race). We were worried about the weather, which had been threatening rain, but it turned out to be perfect. In fact, without the cloud cover, we would probably have all fried to a crisp!

Here is our happy group in front of our box:



We spent a pleasant day, munching on our box lunches from Heavenly Ham, watching the hats, and betting on the ponies. Fred figures we won about $40, which sounds great until you factor in the $60 we wagered.

Derby, for me, was all about the hats, and I had a great time watching some of the brilliant creations people had put together:



If there was one Derby disappointment, it would have to be that I found mint juleps to be one of the most vile concoctions ever created. I wanted to like them--they're so attractive and have such a pretty name--but it was not to be. I did, however, pose with one, which Fred gamely drank for me:



It was a stirring moment when the crowd stood (on their chairs!) and sang "My Old Kentucky Home." Churchill Downs was kind enough to provide lyrics for us out-of-staters:



Derby Day was long and leisurely, but the Derby itself flashed by in the blink of an eye. Before I knew it, it was time to go collect our car from the lawn of some enterprising folks who lived near the track and head off to make our 7:30 dinner reservations at the Napa River Grill. I had the Thai curry scallops on a bed of rice noodles, and Fred had rack of lamb in some sort of marinade that featured Maker's Mark, his all-time favorite bourbon. The food was amazing and was the perfect end to a perfect day!

Best birthday ever

Today is Fred's 46th birthday, and he celebrated with all the usual fanfare: Cake and ice cream. Presents. Tandem jumping with the Golden Knights. You know, nothing out of the ordinary.

We were expecting rain this morning, and Fred was a horrible grump last night, worrying that the weather was going to mess up his jump. The weather gods smiled on him, however, and the jump went off without a hitch.

The Golden Knights presented Fred with a DVD of the experience that is of much better quality than this, but this is what I captured on our camcorder. He is the fourth tandem jumper in this video:



Happy birthday, Fred!

UPDATE: This is the official video they gave him. Each tandem team jumps with their own personal photographer who goes out first and then freefalls face up so that he can shoot the team. They deploy a little chute, which slows them down so that they don't plummet past the photographer. He is underneath them until they deploy the real chute. At that point, they go head up, feet down, and there's really nothing more to see from below. So the photog lands and then shoots their landing. I think Fred's photographer is lucky he didn't get run over:

Bits and brags

Some of my favorite people have been achieving great things over the past few weeks.

For starters, at the track meet a couple of weeks ago, Mike got his mile down to 6 minutes, 6 seconds. It takes me longer than that to DRIVE a mile, once you factor in the time it takes to find my keys.

Last week, Annabelle's school had an art show. Below is a sampling of some of her work:




The biggest news though is about my father. For the past few years, he has been working diligently on a novel, and now it is finally ready! To quote his website, "Medusa's Daughter (2007) is a suspense novel with a sense of dark humor. If you like tales of exotic places, open-cockpit flying, military history, bumbling bad guys, strong women, or the occasional psychic first-grader, you might want to give it a try." Go here to read more about Medusa's Daughter. Way to go, Dad!

An afternoon with the brats

A couple months ago, my mom sent me a link to the trailer for an upcoming documentary about military children: Brats: Our Journey Home. This remarkable film was produced by Donna Musil, an Army brat whose father was a JAG officer here at Fort Knox back in the 1970s. They had a showing today downtown in Elizabethtown, so Fred and I went and took the kids.

The film was a little late starting due to technical difficulties, but once it started it proved to be well worth the wait. Kris Kristofferson (Air Force brat) narrated the film and provided the music, and General Norman Schwarzkopf spoke at length about his experiences as both an Army brat and the parent of brats. The film also offered snippets of interviews with lots of other adults who had grown up as military brats.

I was concerned that perhaps the filmmaker would take an overly sentimental approach to the subject matter, but those concerns proved to be unfounded. If there was one overall message that I took away from the film, it was that the unique experience of being a military brat can be both challenging and empowering.

I'm still unraveling my thoughts on how the film did or did not apply to the experiences of our own brats. We talked about it some in the car on the way home, but it is a little hard for them to really grasp how different their experience is from that of the average American kid by virtue of their affiliation with the military. For one thing, since we have lived on post for the past 4 years, they are surrounded by others who share the experience, which probably renders it more normal. For another thing, the film dealt with the childhood memories of adults who grew up in a military where the military member was automatically the father and where the behavior of the wife and children had a direct impact on the success of his career. Just like my childhood in the 1970s is markedly different from that of a child growing up today, so too is the experience of today's military brat different in many ways from those who grew up in military families of earlier times.

Overall though, I was so impressed by the film that I bought a copy of the DVD. I would love to share it with some of my friends here at Ft. Knox and can't wait to watch it with my family in Florida this summer. If anybody else is interested in borrowing it, just let me know!

I think being a military brat is one of the strangest and most interesting ways to spend an American childhood. The military brats of America are an invisible, unorganized tribe, a federation of brothers and sisters bound by common experience, by our uniformed fathers, by the movement of families being rotated through the American mainland and to military posts in foreign lands. We are an undiscovered nation living invisibly in the body politic of this country. There are millions of us scattered throughout America, but we have no special markings or passwords to identify each other when we move into a common field of vision. We grew up strangers to ourselves. We passed through our military childhoods unremembered. We were transients, billboards to be changed, body temperatures occupying school desks for a short time. We came and went like rented furniture, serviceable when you needed it, but unremarked upon after it was gone. -- Pat Conroy, in the introduction to Mary Edwards Wertsch's Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress

Click here to watch the trailer on YouTube.

The mad hatter

I have a confession. I bought another hat.

I swear, this is like an illness! This fourth hat is just like the green hat except that it's pink. Like the green hat, it would need some pimping to make it Derby-worthy--perhaps a giant white rose pinned to the brim?

Speaking of the green hat! While it had many admirers, the few people who hated it (which would include my husband) hated it with such passion that I don't think it will be THE hat. I want my hat to be a uniter, not a divider.

I got Fred to take my picture in my Derby dress (and shoes!) with each hat and have sent it to everybody who weighed in the first time around. If I missed you or if you missed the first round of voting, shoot me an email or leave a comment and I'll send it your way as well.

By the way, Fred bought a Derby hat this afternoon. It took him 15 minutes and cost him 5 dollars. Not fair!

Freedom!

Oh, I love the last day of school! I had my last class for the semester on Wednesday night, but I still had a paper hanging over my head that's due at midnight tonight. I got it turned in this morning, and it feels great to have the first semester behind me.

I know I haven't been a very faithful blogger, and I also owe a bunch of people emails. Now that I've got the spring semester put to bed, I'm going to start trying to get caught up both online and around the house. Be patient with me!

Spring Break--the after-action report

Spring Break was kind of a mixed bag this year. For one thing, Annabelle started off the break sick, and Fred was sick for the weekend on either end. Our trip down to Alabama and over to Fort Benning was fun, but it seems that I am allergic to Alabama. By the end of our first night there, I was a sniffly, sneezy mess with red, itchy eyes.

I promised to post a picture of Annabelle with her stylish new hat, so here's a shot. I thought it was cute how she had Snickers strapped to her backpack for the trip, but she just about injured herself rolling her eyes at me:



On Thursday we left the kids to visit with Fred's parents while he and I went over to Fort Benning. Fred was proud to be able to pin jump wings on one of his guys (not a lot of jumping out of airplanes here at Recruiting Command):



After the ceremony, we went out with Captain Beane and his parents for a very nice lunch and then went back to Alabama.

We drove home on Friday. The weather had turned cold a couple days earlier, and I was disgusted to see snow as we got closer to Fort Knox:



It didn't stick, but it's just the principle of the thing. Go away, snow, and take your stupid cold weather with you.

Today the kids are back at school, and Fred is back at work, so it kind of feels like a mini-Spring Break for me. I love that feeling of having the house all to myself again after a period of playing nicely with others.

Got hats?

I bought 4 yesterday. Granted, one of them was for Annabelle (and is totally cute--I need to post a picture). One of the other 3 is for Derby. The question is, WHICH one?

Annabelle and I started off our hat-shopping odyssey in Macy's where I found a hat I really liked, but it was $105 ($150 original minus 30%). After checking out the $300 and $400 hats at Von Maur, however, that started looking like a bargain, so I bought it (after checking to make sure that, yes, hats are returnable).

Then we went to Steinmart where I found a hat very similar to the Macy's hat that was only $30. In fact, this hat was the SAME hat, right down to the label inside, with the only difference being a few silk flowers on the brim. Naturally, I grabbed it, as well as a plain green straw hat (my dress is white with pink flowers and green leaves) that was only $20.

I took some pictures to show my board of invisible friends, and so far sentiment is in favor of the green hat. The people who don't like the green hat though REALLY don't like it. I will be the first to admit that the green hat definitely needs a little pimping if it's going to go to Derby--maybe some pink tulle and some flowers?

There is no way in hell I'm posting those very unflattering mirror shots here on my blog, but if you would like to weigh in with your opinion, shoot me an email or leave a comment here, and I will be more than happy to send them to you.

No foolin'!

Well, today is April Fool's Day, but I just can't come up with anything good. I briefly contemplated posting something here as a prank ("I'm pregnant, and we're moving to Korea" crossed my mind), but then I decided not to. I don't know what's wrong with me--I used to really get into AFD.

When Mike was 5, I packed plastic food in his lunchbox. I had given the teacher a Lunchable to feed him after he found the fake food, but alas, he cried, and a joke just isn't any fun if the jokee cries. Trust me on this one--I am, after all, the joker who once borrowed urine from a pregnant friend to better fake Fred out with a positive pregnancy test some years ago. He cried too. (OK, not really--keeled over in a dead faint is probably more accurate.)

So in order not to make anybody cry today, I shall dispense with the pranks and instead just wish my mother a very happy birthday! I have a nice gift on order, but unless the postal service is dispensing with their whole hang-up against delivering mail on Sundays, I'm afraid it's going to be late. For today, I will have to make do with posting a nice photo of Mom and me that Mike took in the town square of Nowy Sacz, Poland:



Happy birthday, Mom (and I'm not kidding!)!