Getting a new perspective through the eyes of an eight year old

If someone would have told me ten years ago that I would have two athletic kids I would have thought they were nuts.  There isn't an ounce of athleticism in my body, and very little in Bob's, but for some reason both Katie and Ethan have an incredible amount of endurance and generally decent athletic ability.  My son seems to be  the more athletic of the two, as we received several complements this past soccer season on his ability.  He was a crazy, head butting speed demon that was always playing the middle because he could so quickly run up and down the field to cover both offense and defense. So it was with great anticipation that we had Ethan try out for the travel soccer team for the first time this year.  Katie had already enjoyed a year of travel soccer, and I was really looking forward to getting Ethan on a team and developing his skills.


The tryout process is an extensive one, a total of four hours over two days where the kids are put through a number of drills while the coaches do some sort of evaluation on the sea of kids.  We had already experienced the process the previous year with Katie (see this post), so I knew what to expect, and knew that in most cases the kids would not get cut.


Once the tryout process is over there is a two month wait before you hear anything in which you have to keep telling your kids to be patient when they frequently ask "When are we going to find out about soccer??"  Finally, at the beginning of this week, we received notification that Katie would be on the U-10 team.  Once that news came in, I waited with impatient anticipation to find out about Ethan, obsessively checking our email and running to the mailbox as soon as the mail arrived. Days went by with no email, no letter.  I suppose you know where this is going.  On Friday we received an envelope in the mail, only it wasn't the fat congratulatory letter, full of registration forms and due dates.  Instead, we received a very thin envelope which contained our returned registration check and a form letter stating that "Unfortunately, Ethan was not selected for the travel team for the 2011 season."


I was dumbfounded.  How could this be?  The kid is a good athlete, and as good as any of those other boys trying out!  Knowing that I was working on very little sleep after a week of bronchitis, I went back to our bedroom and shut the door so the kids couldn't see me losing my mind in front of them.  Waves of anger and frustration went through me as I burst into tears, thinking about how Ethan will once again have to tag along to Katie's games, sitting on the sidelines in complete boredom and knowing that he did not make a team while his sister did.  It wasn't fair.  It wasn't right!  I felt myself turning into "crazy parent", the kind that wants to fight back with complaints about the system and its politics.


Once I calmed down, Bob and I had to let Ethan know he didn't make the team.  It is quite a difficult thing to deliver bad news to your son.  I didn't want to see his spirit crushed by this stupid process.  But we just kind of flat out told him:


"Sorry buddy, but you didn't make the travel team".


"Aw, darn!" says Ethan.


"You know, you can still play rec league next year, and I'll even let you try baseball if you want".


"Yay!" he says, "Can I go play now?"  and with that he ran back out of the room.


I am always overanalyzing my son.  He is not a verbal communicator, and sometimes I feel I have to hound him with multiple questions and observations to figure out what is going on in his head.  "He must be so upset he doesn't want to show it." I thought.  After a few minutes, I went back to talk to him again and make sure he was alright.


"You know, buddy," I said, " it's alright to be sad.  Are you feeling sad?  Do you want to talk about it?"


Ethan stopped what he was doing and looked at me.  "Mom, this doesn't make me sad.  If we lost our house, then I would be sad."  And he returned to playing with whatever little toy gadget was in front of him.


If we lost our house, then I would be sad.  I had just been put in my place by an eight year old.  That's right, kid.  There are far worse things to happen to you than to be cut from a soccer team.  Bob and I are very blessed to both be employed at the moment.  We are all in good health.  Our kids are doing well in school and staying out of trouble.  So many other families are not nearly as fortunate as us.  It took an eight year old to remind me that relative what other friends are dealing with right now, not making a soccer team is pretty insignificant.


This Thanksgiving I will certainly be counting my blessings, for I have many.  I am particularly blessed to have a son that doesn't take disappointment very seriously, and seems to have a better perspective on life than his crazy, over-reacting mother.  Thank you, little man.  You taught your mother a valuable lesson.

All you need is love . . . and cardboard, newspaper, flour, and water

Every once in a while there are reminders of past events in your life that make you sit back and think, "Wow, we did that, and it was actually pretty amazing!"  Recently I was reminded of one of those events.


This December marks the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's death and the start of a Beatles obsession that has stayed with me and some of my childhood friends throughout adulthood.  Our craze peaked in the summer of 1981, where countless hours would be spent traveling between my house and those of my friends (Linda, Carla, and Jan) carting Beatles albums back and fourth, listening to different songs on our record players and analyzing the lyrics as best as almost-14-year-old girls can do.  


That year also marked another important milestone, because my friends and I realized that we were pushing the age limit on Halloween trick-or-treating.  The start of high school meant you stopped asking for candy and either stayed home to hand out treats, went to a halloween party, or participated in "corning", the act of throwing dried corn on porches or at cars as they drove by.  (I tried to explain corning to my Upstate NY students, and they looked at me in disbelief).  Still, we wanted to do something to proclaim our Beatle love, so we decided to forgo proper Halloween etiquette and dress up as the Beatles.  Now, this was not going to be any lame, last minute project.  If we were to properly demonstrate our adoration, we had to make it magnificent.  


Our goal was to re-create their early look, with the collarless suit and skinny tie.  However, the outfits would be secondary to the most important part--recreating the instruments.  


We actually started planning during the summer, where I distinctly remember working in my friend Carla's garage, laying out guitars with large pieces of cardboard.  We used the front cover of the Something New album and actually attempted to scale the guitars using a proportion. 

 I would measure the height of John in the picture, then the length of his  guitar, and use that ratio to scale up our own guitars.  Our accuracy was a little off, and the guitars ended up being slightly oversized, but once they were taped, slathered in paper mache and painted, they really looked good!  We even found some wierd looking thumb tacks in that garage and used plastic thread to string them.  Linda used a similar process to make the drums, and by mid October it was all coming together. 


Mom made my suit because she loved to sew, so mine didn't exactly match the rest of the group.  In the end I guess it didn't matter.  I don't know where we found the wigs, but I do remember Linda's mother finding the material to make the skinny ties.


The final process was recording our Beatles albums onto a tape.  We painted a large cardboard box to look like a speaker, and another friend carried a tape player while wearing that box for the music.  It was really quite a project!


Had we dressed up like that today, there would have been ten cell phones out, taking our picture and sending it to friends, relatives, facebook, etc.  But back then, no one had a camera handy.  If we did have one there wasn't any film in it, or we needed a flash, or we just didn't think about it.  Luckily Linda's Dad took one photo of us, slightly damaged from a future car fire: 

This was taken at the Bedford Halloween contest and parade, where we should have taken first place.  Unfortunately the judges must not have been Beatles fans, because the award was given to someone dressed up like an upside down man.  

For 29 years the memory of that halloween had been foggy in my head, but the picture brought so much of it back.  I had forgotten all of the detail and planning we put into it, just four almost-14-year-old  girls, with very little parental help.  


After talking with Carla and Linda now, we can't find anything about this event in old yearbooks or other writings, and it was difficult for us to believe we would have done this freshman year.  I think we didn't write about it because we were ready to move on and felt this challenged our maturity, and our "coolness".  


I look at these 14 year old faces and realize how transitional that time period was for us.  After this event, we put away the Beatle albums and started watching a new cable channel called MTV.  We stopped chasing boys on our bikes and started trying to date them.  We spent hours after school playing fancy new video games like Pac Man and Galaga.  The paper mache instruments were stored in rooms and closets, and we moved on.


All of us would go through different challenges in high school, trying to fit in, trying to figure out who we really were. I wish I could tell those 14 year old girls to enjoy what they did, to embrace the nerdiness of this project and if you didn't quite fit in, it would be alright.  Twenty nine years later the awkwardness is gone, and only the memory of "Wow, we did that!" remains.  It will be cherished as much as our love of the fab four.

Whoa, where is the time going

School has started and I have not had any time to write.  So many thoughts in my head, but right now we are busy with homework, violin practice, and sports.  K is at a stage where she's trying different things to see which one she likes, so every week night we are at lacrosse, soccer, or swimming.  E is soon to follow, as he just tried out for the soccer travel team.  So, basically I am taking time to write this to say I don't have much time to write this.  However, in the next week or so I do want to write about this most awesome picture my friend found:

This definitely deserves a post, and I will get at it soon.  

When perfectionism crosses frugality, I am in a lot of trouble.


Last week started a vacation week for Bob, which translated to a long list of things he wanted to accomplish.  What wasn't on the list was our bedroom closet system falling down.  (I was going to post a picture but didn't want to press my luck with my husband, who just realized he has lost a half day to this mess.)  I guess you really can have too many clothes hanging in a closet, or perhaps we were in need of stronger supports, but either way Bob's schedule completely changed Monday morning when we were faced with a large pile of clothes on the bedroom floor.  


We took this opportunity to clean out unwanted items (it was really out of necessity, because obviously there were too many items in the closet!).  While Bob secured the wire shelves, I started sorting.  So many items we had stored, though they were way beyond even donation stage.  After an hour or so we had the donation pile, the hang back up pile, and, finally, a huge bag of clothes to be thrown away.


I looked at that bag, mostly full of old sweatshirts and sweatpants (circa 1995), and the frugal perfectionist in me started to think.  "I could turn those rags into something useful, say, a rag rug!"  You know, just like our grandmothers (or perhaps great-grandmothers) used to do.  Oh dear.  You see, I used to do things like that.  When I was home full time with a newborn and a toddler I would attempt every frugal project listed in The Tightwad Gazette (a nice book series, by the way--just don't try to do everything in the book!).  One time I took all of our old jeans, cut out several squares, and made a rugged jeans quilt.  It did come in handy as a picnic blanket, and the damn thing was indestructible.  I guess at the time being able to work on a big project helped maintain my sanity while caring for two infants.  However, when I think of making a rag rug now I can make a list of things that would be a better use of my time:  

read a book

play with the kids

walk the dog

cook an amazing meal

work in the garden

pet the cats

write a blog

watch a sunrise

mop the kitchen floor

Sometimes you have to realize that time is valuable--more valuable than recycling old sweatpants.  

I watched Bob carry that bag out into the garage, and I let it go.  A wave of relief went through me--I didn't have to do anything with that bag, just watch it go out the door.  I was free from committing myself to another endless project, and the closet was free from that clutter.  I did however decide to sit down and watch an episode of Hoarders, just in case the desire came up to retrieve the bag from the garage at the last minute.  Oh yes, letting that bag go was definitely the right thing to do.

What to do with that eggplant

Many people shy away from eggplant, that very strange vegetable.  My kids take one look at it and run.  Bob and I love to slice, coat, and cook it in a little oil as an appetizer, or even grill large slices outside.  It is the steak of the vegetable world.


This year the garden yielded an incredible amount of eggplant--the largest amount it has ever delivered!  I started out making eggplant parmesan and frying the slices like I normally do, but that wasn't using up the amount being produced.  I peeled, sliced, blanched and froze a gallon bagful but was still searching for more ways to cook up my supply.


Today I found this delightful recipe from Smitten Kitchen.  Her recipe uses zucchini but it works just as well with eggplant.  I salted and drained the eggplant slices for quite a while (two hours, probably) just because it took that long to get back to cooking after chasing kids around the house.  Make sure you take paper towels and soak up as much liquid as you can from the eggplant slices after they sit in the salt for a while.  This keeps them from being bitter and soggy.  I also used half white flour, half white whole wheat flour (King Arthur Flour sells white whole wheat) for the dough, and it passed the Bob test (he hates anything made from whole wheat flour--says it "tastes like dirt".  I think next time I'll top it with thinly sliced shallots or caramelized onions.  

T double E double R double I . . .

It's feeling like fall in Upstate NY--nights are cool and morning dog walks require a sweatshirt.  The days will still warm up to the low eighties, but it just doesn't feel as muggy as June or July.  The garden is dying down while the apples and wild grapes are ripening.  I love this time of year.


When walking the dog the other morning the laneway looked like it was ready for Halloween.  We started out having to break through a few single web strings that crossed our path, but then I saw this:

I don't know if it is just timing--I'm walking the dog at the right moment when the sun shines through the dewey webs--or if spiders work like crazy when the temperature starts to drop.  These were along the brush next to our path, all the way down the path.  

If you didn't get too close, the spider would be sitting in the center of their masterpiece.  Otherwise as soon as you approached they would drop out of sight.

This picture has two webs with a spider in each if you can see them

We have a healthy respect for spiders in this house.  It must be from growing up seeing the original Charlotte's Web in the movie theatre.  The kids are told not to kill them (our nemesis is the cluster fly) but also not to get too close.  I have witnessed what a spider bite can do, thanks to a coworker's unlucky encounter.  So, as long as these guys keep in their spot and do their job, we can coexist.


This morning a line was crossed.  As I was walking the dog, looking for webs, I found a Monarch butterfly motionless, seemingly suspended in the air.  A closer inspection revealed its wings being stuck in a web.  Luckily it seemed the spider had not yet approached its prey.  I had a Wilber moment, took a stick and broke the web.  The butterfly quickly flew away and I was elated.  Sorry Charlotte--you'll have to try again for a more ugly dinner.  Meanwhile the dog and I continued our walk, looking for more webs.  I have yet to find one that spells "Terrific" but I'm still looking.

Shrimp Fra Diavolo

This is a wonderful way to use up that half bag of frozen shrimp in the freezer, if you happen to have shrimp in the freezer.  If not, go out and buy some because shrimp cooks so quickly it makes a nice work day dinner.  I made it this week, using up my last jar of whole tomatoes from last year's garden.  However, you don't need home grown tomatoes to make this.  It will still be delicious with store bought canned tomatoes.

-1/2 to 1 pound of shrimp, or whatever you have in the house
-5 tablespoons olive oil
-1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (this makes it a little hot--adjust the amount to the level of heat you like)
-4 to 5 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed (even more if you really like garlic)
salt
-1 (28-oz) can diced tomatoes (drained), or whole tomatoes (drained and cut up), or crushed tomatoes, it really doesn't matter but it is good if the tomatoes are still chunky, as opposed to tomato sauce
-1 cup white wine if you have it, or 1 cup chicken broth, or water really
-1/4 cup fresh cut up parsley leaves, or a tablespoon of parsley flakes
-linguine or spaghetti

Cook the pasta in a large pot of water while you are cooking the shrimp.

For the shrimp:
Heat a large skillet over medium high heat.  Toss the shrimp with half of the pepper flakes and 2 T oil.  Cook the oil and shrimp in the skillet until shrimp is opaque, maybe about two minutes, stirring to get both sides done.  Transfer the shrimp to a medium bowl and take the pan off of the heat to cool it down for 2 to 3 minutes (you want it cooler so the garlic doesn't burn when you put it in).  Have the tomatoes, spices, and wine ready to go.

Put the skillet back on the burner and turn the heat to low.  Put in 3 T oil and the garlic and cook while stirring until it is aromatic (maybe 4 to 5 minutes).  Watch the garlic so it doesn't burn.  Burned garlic will look brown and taste bitter.  Now put in the tomatoes, wine, sugar, 1/2 t salt, and the remaining pepper flakes.  Turn the heat up to medium and simmer until thickened slightly, about eight minutes.  Dump in the shrimp and heat through about a minute longer.

Serve the shrimp and sauce over the cooked pasta.  Yum!