Good News! I've Been Released!

AWOL? Yes, and I was being held captive by the little guys you see here! Zach, age 3 ½, and his baby brother Sam, age 2 months, captured me and kept me in an undisclosed location for the past week. Don’t I look stressed, tortured and miserable?

My release was negotiated by the government of Grandmastan, ransom paid by the not-for-profit organization MWBCHSIAOU, also known as My-Wife-Better-Come-Home-Soon-I’m-Almost-Out-of-Underwear. I believe that my very own husband, the Center of the Universe had a role in my release.

He was thinking of sending a former president to negotiate with my captors, but Clinton and Carter have recently achieved similar rescues, and he knew that if Dubya was sent out, I’d go underground forever.

Anyhoo, I had a blast, and I’ll be blogging about some of our escapades! The photo here shows me with the boys at Train Town, a very cute little amusement park with a 25-minute train ride in Sonoma, CA. It’s about an hour and a half from their home in Sacramento. Well worth the drive, especially if your 3-year old is obsessed with trains, as Zachary is.

Of course, he’s also very unhappy about loud sounds, so there are a lot of photos of Zachary with his hands covering his ears. This would not be so surprising if Zach were not prone to making loud noises himself. He is often heard singing at the top of his lungs, be it “I’m Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee”, the alphabet song, or, God help us, “The Theme From Ben Ten”. Not familiar with it? Neither were we, except that Zach’s dad had heard some of his peers talking about it at a recent toddler birthday party. Seems it’s a show aimed at 7-8 year olds, and some of Zachary’s friends have brothers in that age group.

We asked Zach how he knew about Ben Ten. “Chase sings it.” Yep, Chase has older brothers. Check.

So Grandma went online to find out what the real words to the song are. What Zach was singing was hilarious, but also kinda like your drunken roommate trying to sing karaoke to a song she never quite learned.

Let’s just say, Zach got “superpowers”, “no ordinary kid” and “Ben Ten” right. The rest was insanely distorted. As in, “Scotty had a (blah-blah) and he licked it when he did,” which should have been, “It started when an alien device did what it did.”

When his daddy tried to tell Zachary what the real words are, Zach was unconvinced. Wait—did I say unconvinced. No, Zach was angry, in the manner of a 3-year old, insistent that his daddy was wrong and Chase was right. Whatever. Daddy may be Zachary’s total hero, but when it comes to superheroes, Chase has the street cred.

Coming up later this week:  Grandma takes Zach to the circus (much more ear-covering), and a play date with Zachary's betrothed, the lovely Miss J, as the two play on the slip 'n' slide, much to the delight of Miss J's adorable little sister, Miss M.  Hilarity ensued, as always.

Thanks for a great visit, fam!  --oops, did I neglect to mention that these boys have parents?  Bygones.

Postcards from Outer Space

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night… you know, the U.S. Postal Service generally does a great job of bringing us our mail. But once in a while, since we live at 8324 Elm Street (fictitiously speaking, of course), we get mail for the people at 8324 Poplar, a block north of us. We put the envelope back into our mailbox, raise the flag, and the next day, it’s back on its way. Occasionally we get a piece of mail meant for one of our neighbors, and we just stick that in their mailbox, or –and this may shock you—hand it to them in person.

So imagine my surprise when I moseyed out to the mailbox recently, and flipping through the flyers, bills and magazines, found a postcard from Italy, addressed to my daughter. Who lives in Sacramento.

Yep, I swear I am not making this up. My son and his bride, (the former Daffodil, now my actual ‘dil’) had honeymooned in Italy, and here was a beautiful picture postcard from Capri, meant for his sister.

The address portion was clearly labeled to Rachel and family, obviously a different surname from ours, at HER street address, Sacramento, CA, proper zip code and all. What the what??? I felt like I was being pranked, Punk’d, or for those of you my age, on Candid Camera.

I literally turned around 360° in the cul-de-sac, thinking that Rob and Jessica must be in their car (yeah, they just dropped in from Washington, D.C., right?) watching me, laughing their tiny respective a**es off. Nope. No sign of pranksters.

I couldn’t process what I was seeing. How did this end up here in Missouri, addressed as it was?

As I headed down the driveway, I noticed that there was also a small envelope, a thank-you note, as it turned out, addressed to us from Rob and Jessica. Ahhh, I thought, I get it. Somehow the note card must have stuck to the postcard when they mailed them, and the postcard intended for Sacramento just piggy-backed onto our mail, ending up here. Okay, wacky and implausible, but not impossible.

Later, when I spoke to Rob, I said, “Guess what we got in the mail today?” I pretty much stunned him into silence with the answer, and that takes some doing. He will normally outwit me and anyone else foolish enough to spar with him, with one arm tied behind his back. Then I told him my theory that supposedly explained how this could happen. He listened condescendingly (a mother can tell) and then condescendingly patiently pointed out that he had actually mailed the postcard from Italy.

Now he had truly stunned ME into silence. I just assumed they had brought the postcards home with them and mailed them stateside. “No way!” I said. He confidently told me to look at the postmark. Well, that was the other thing: there WAS no postmark. It had an Italian stamp on it, but…. How did it land in OUR mailbox? I could see it going to Sacramento, and I could see it going nowhere, but seriously, how did WE get it?

Rob said, “What about YOUR postcard?” Oh, you sent us a postcard, too? It hasn’t arrived. Maybe it’s gone to Sacramento, I hypothesized…

Ten days later said postcard arrived. Beautiful scene of Capri, sweet note from the kids, and addressed to the Center of the Universe and me. Italian stamp. No postmark. I’ll never know if it got here via Sacramento.

The Puzzle Master, My Hero!

I like puzzles and games; crosswords, Sudoku, kakuro, oh my! I especially like to play along with Will Shortz on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday mornings.

Shortz is the editor of the New York Times crossword puzzles, and has a bazillion other titles and honors to his credit. The Sunday morning gig, however, enables listeners (like me!) to play along as he plays word games, or does brain teasers. When the game ends he issues a challenge for the coming week, and it’s normally in the form of a puzzle. If you solve the puzzle, you e-mail in your answer, and one random entry is chosen to select a participant to play the next week’s puzzle on the air. Believe me, it’s entertaining.

Here’s an example of a past puzzle Shortz challenged the listeners to solve: Sacramento, the capital of California, can be broken into two words, five letters each, and they are synonyms of each other. What are they? (Yes, I’ll post the answer tomorrow.)

Sometimes the puzzles are more about numbers than words, but hey, I say, bring it on. (Doesn’t mean I always solve them, though!) Here’s one of those: Write down the digits from 2 to 7, in order. Add two mathematical symbols to get an expression equaling 2010. What symbols are these? (Right, tomorrow, remember? That gives you time to work on it—if you want more than a day, just don’t peek. It’s like not looking at the answers in the daily paper—your choice.)

So last week’s challenge—meaning we won’t get the outcome till this coming Sunday, the 8th—was to come up with a riddle that starts off with "What's the difference between" and involves a spoonerism. Okay, here I’m going to quote from the website to make good use of my time, and not make a complete fool of myself trying to explain this…

“A spoonerism is when consonant sounds are interchanged. For example, "What's the difference between an ornithologist and a loser in a spelling bee?" The answer: "One is a bird watcher, and the other is a word botcher." Another example: "What's the difference between an iceberg and a groom at a stable?" The answer: "One crushes boats, while the other brushes coats." Entries will be judged on cleverness, originality and naturalness of syntax. “

So here you have it, a challenge to rouse your brain from the summer doldrums. What? That’s just ME? Oh. Nevermind. But just in case you like word games, come up with one, and post it here as a comment. Want to know what I submitted? Here you go: “What’s the difference between a lunatic and a gastroenterologist? One goes nuts and the other knows guts.”

He’s going to hit me with a skillet, isn’t he?

A Man, His God, and His Dog

Well, it's Father's Day, and I'm spending it with my daughter, grandson, and my son-in-law whose fatherhood will double any day now! Yes, another boy is due here, even as we speak, so we tried to give this particular Daddy the royal treatment.




As it happens, the stars aligned to make this Father's Day very special for Eric.



He had two wishes for the day. One, to make an early outing to the local Farmers' Market and adjacent park. Goal: to score a bounty of fresh, local fruit so we could create a massive fruit salad as part of dinner, and corn on the cob alongside. After the shopping, we'd play in the very creative and cool public park nearby.



Two, to have the ultimate Chicago hot dog dinner! Yeah, I know. We (my daughter and I) offered to make steak, sushi, stir-fry, barbecue, you name it! We thought we should do something special for him, and offered him carte blanche. We couldn't have been more surprised to find that he wanted the humble hot dog!



Well, it may have been humble in the past, but this dinner was anything but humble! I will show you how elaborate a hot dog dinner can be!



So, step one: go to the Farmers' Market. Yes! It's a great place and the array and assortment of fresh produce was fantastic. We bought tomatoes, corn, peaches, strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe and coffee. We saw lots of fresh fish, swimming in giant tubs, lots more displayed on beds of chopped ice, and so much foliage it made my head spin. But here's the best part: We walked straight into the path of the Sacramento mayor, Kevin Johnson.



Now this isn't just any ordinary mayor. For the very, very few of you who don't already know this, Kevin Johnson is a former NBA star, and a hero of the Phoenix Suns. Roughly translated, in Sacramento Kevin Johnson is the mayor. In Phoenix, Kevin Johnson is a god. My son-in-law grew up in Phoenix. You do the math.


As a trained journalist, Eric has interviewed all kinds of people, including very famous people. Not to namedrop, but Eric has interviewed former Vice President Al Gore, and the Governator himself: Ah-nold Schwartzenegger. He doesn't impress all that easy.



But Kevin Johnson? We still haven't wiped the smile off Eric's face. He was practically singing as we walked away! He can't wait to let all his old friends see this photo of him and his family with the One and Only Kevin Johnson.

Step two: Played in the park, climbed on the climbers, swung on the swings, slid down the slides! It's a paradise for the 3-year old, and for those who love to watch him have fun, too.

We came home and made lunch, took naps, and did some general baby-readying of the soon-to-be-resurrected baby toys and paraphernalia. Then I took my grandson on a little walk to the neighborhood park where we did more climbing, swinging, sliding and hide-and-seeking.





Eventually, it was dinner time. I made the fruit salad and the corn on the cob, the baked beans and the hot dogs. Eric took on the condiments -- when he had told me last night what he had in mind, I negotiated this division of labor with him. I don't mind work, but this seemed a touch excessive. Let me put it this way: I'd rather be on the floor playing Candyland with my grandson that mincing raw onions, banana peppers, tomatoes, and yes-- cucumbers! (what the WHAT?) to be served on the hot dogs! Oh let's face it, I'd rather get beaten up in the parking lot than do that, too.



Meanwhile, back at the ranch, dinner made it to the table. Here's what Eric's plate looked like. And he'd like you to know that the celery salt is an integral part of the Chicago-style hot dog experience. That, and the iridescent, glow-in-the-dark relish! 

From humble wishes, great things may come!  Happy Father's Day to all those celebrating!