The Art of Bowling

Last week, for a final summer celebration, we went out to dinner and bowling with our neighbors, Stan & Bree. It had been years since any of us had been bowling, but we needed to add a little spice to our going-out-to-dinner routine, so for $2 per person, we couldn't go wrong. Each of us had our own strategy: (the boys choosing the macho, 14+ pound balls, while the girls sensibly used the lightest balls available--guess who did NOT have sore arms the next day.)
Stan worked on a fancy spin--which nearly cost him his thumb on several occasions
K threw the ball as hard as he could--nearly denting the floor
Bree took the opposite stance--rolling her ball as slowly as possible without aiming at anything
I just tried my best to keep my ball out of the gutter--I think I only had 3 or 4 gutter balls.

Needless to say, Bree's consistency (and loud shrills) won both games, and I never took last place. It was a fun evening of strikes, high fives, laughs, and looking like geeks.

WONDERFUL News!!!

Many who read this blog have asked for an update on Tim and Amy K regarding her pregnancy. I am happy to announce that we received an email from them this afternoon notifying us that Amy had a healthy (nearly 7lb) baby boy. They have named him Zachariah Samuel, and as far as I know everything is GREAT. As you know this is truly miraculous news and we couldn't be happier for them. I have posted a picture of Zachariah below. If you would like to get in touch with Tim and Amy to congratulate them, send an email to our gmail account and we will forward their address to you.

Why I Tell the Stories in this Family

A couple of days ago, P had a failed blogging attempt when she, in an effort to be funny, wrote about a miscreant child named Marilyn who had blatantly rejected her hand on the way to the daycare bus that day. This surly little girl subsequently went off path, stepped into a huge muddle puddle, and sobbing wet made this plea to the crowded bus "does someone have a napkin so that I can clean off my shoes?" Now, (1) keep in mind that this child is a kindergartener, (seriously between trashbombs and napkins for shoes, what is happening to today's youth) and that (2) I got serious flack for my previous trash bomb post about "hating children." So you can imagine my surprise when P's response to Marilyn was a heckling laugh and a scolding "well I don't feel one bit sorry for you." Guess we all hate children . . . (I handed her a cookie).

Those of you who know P's parents know exactly where her unsympathetic comment comes from: Shugs (P's dad). Shugs has been known, a time or two thousand, to commit such a line to P's lil brother when he, for some reason or another, has exasperated him. Now, if blogs had sound bites, I would be offering my best imitation of poor Shugs right here, and we all would be laughing because his routine is truly comical. He pauses, his bottom lip drops a little bit so that there's a little lisp on the "s" - his voice hits a higher register on the "I" for emphatic appeal and the "bit" hits you like a hammer of pure contempt. If one has perfected the pure synthesis of scorn and exasperation in this line, surely it is him.

In any event, P had wanted to use this post to draw an ironic tension with the little girl's name because that name (as you know) happens to be my mom's. The post started "who names their child Marilyn these days" and simply went downhill from there. As a writing instructor, I cautioned her against publishing this post without revision. I offered some key heuristic strategies that would help her improve the writing, but alas, she (like so many of my freshman) simply gave up (though she was busy, not apathetic).

Initially, I felt a little guilty about my critique. After all, this is her blog too and I felt pretty down in the muck when she told me not to "post on that intellectual crap anymore." I was wretched from my guilt, however, when we received a call from my mom that evening. Wanting to make up for my bad behavior, I started the story in front of P so that she knew (thought) I thought she was funny. I began with a brief context, P was at school...it has been raining...there was this bratty kid and when I got to the name, she cut me off and said "Marilyn, who names their kid that . . . ah eh eh eh (her laugh)" Vindication! VIN.DI.CA.TION!

I knew when my mom made that comment that I had done my job as P's bff. Now I love my mom, LOVE my mom, but she (like P) is not that funny. Or, I should say, they are funny in a special way: in the way that they tell really lengthy (bad) jokes/stories and you laugh because of how hard they are laughing about it and laugh even harder when someone teases them (you know I ham right mom). To be fair, mom and P have surprised me; lately P, has come up with some shockingly funny things (which I will post on later) . . . but for the most part, jokes are reserved for the consistent, often inappropriate, and always hyperbolic characters who if their joke is bad, know that they must take the heat as the next target . . .

Drs. J

P will say that her recent application to the doctoral program at ISU was motivated by the simple fact that I cannot be the only one in the house with a PhD. The truth, however, is that she is an exceptional student and thinker, and wanted to advance her knowledge by attending a few more years of school (to eventually write a booklength dissertation project). Now, should her recent acceptance (!) startle anyone into believing that we will be residing in Normal any longer than necessary, the answer is emphatically "no!" P, will accelerate her doctoral coursework so that when we leave, she can conduct her research from afar (indeed, A FAR). Never the less, this post is to celebrate her accomplishments, which seem to be accumulating at a rapid pace.

One of my master's advisors once told me to relish the moment when one gets accepted to a PhD program. Something like one percent of all undergraduates go to graduate school to earn a masters degree and one percent of those students go on to be accepted into a doctoral program (there's no saying what percentage actually finish!).

Congratulations P!

I Got Trash Bombed!

Those who know me (K) know that I am prone to hating children from time to time; namely, when they give me the flu-or sick in general-, when they scream at the top of their lungs for more than 10 seconds, when they write in my books, when they are defiant in social situations because they know that they are less likely to get in trouble, and so on. I don't consider this feature of my personality to be particularly incompatible with wanting children of my own, nor do I think that feeling this way (moderately irritated, hate is certainly not the right word) will make me a bad parent in any sense of the word. Give me a few seconds of silence, a warm cookie and I get over it pretty quick.

This evening, however, I experienced a renewed animosity for children when P and I were walking around the lake with the hound. We were walking behind a couple pushing a stroller, and walking next to them was (I would guess) their five year old son. The boy was really cute; his parents were obviously of Latino descent and he had blond hair and blue eyes with a dark complexion. His attitude, however, was, oh how to put this delicately: naughty.

So we are walking by them, we smiled, said hi, and the little %@()%# turned around, wound up with all the strength his five year old body could muster and chucked an empty Frito wrapper at me screaming at the top of his lungs "YOU GOT TRASH BOMBED!!!" I smiled and kept walking, P started laughing and I said "I have to blog about this."

In my day, if I would have "trash bombed" anyone, I would have been busted. Not only would my dad have punished me with manual labor, but my mom would have made me write an essay about why "trash bombing" was impolite and in that discussion I would need to provide a detailed analysis of what constitutes appropriate action when we encounter people we don't know.

Seriously, where do kids learn this stuff?

The Kicker

Apparently, the "don't call us, we'll call you" policy applies to Southwest's lost baggage troup, as we received a call around 9 about our "misplaced bags." Fortunately, "all the bags were recovered" and "can be to you as early as 3:00am" this past morning. NO PROBLEM waking up for that. So we sit down, settle in to our previously recorded program "So you think you can dance" to receive another call from our peeps at Southwest.

Now apparently! (if you didn't know, we didn't) there is a hundred dollar delivery limit for the bags and if the time of delivery exceeds the one hundred dollars, Southwest must ship the bags FED EX to our house. APPARENTLY, it costs more than 100 bucks to travel to Normal (shocker) so our bags will be to us on Tuesday (more like Friday) which means that the Southwest peeps have two days to open our bags, rummage around, find the good stuff (shaving cream, hair gel, razor blades) and alas we are no better off than we would have been had we simply consolidated. More proof that we apparently just don't belong here . . .

(Yes, I believe I just set the record for the most apparently's used in a two paragraph blog post!)

No Clearer Indication

Should there be any lingering doubt that we do not belong in Normal, this evening's shenanigans offered undeniable proof that we "gotta-get out of this place." After a fine trip to the N-Dub, we arrived at the airport to catch a plane back to Chi town. An hour and a half early, plenty of time, but there was a slight curiousity that led P and I to believe there might be stormy waters ahead. After standing in line for a little bit, we noticed that a rather substantial line was forming at the bag scanner across the way. Now, I don't have any beef with bag scanners, I am thankful for them, but this particular crew seemed terribly inefficient. There was literally a moment where P stopped me and said "we need to consolidate and carry this stuff on," but having my shaving cream, hair gel and razor blades confiscated on the way over, I wasn't about to donate any more loot to the airline crews (btw, do you ever wonder where that stuff goes?) . . .

So we left our bags at the security desk and hustled over to the gate. . .

Fast foward four hours, two bags of lorna doons and a sack of bagel chips later and we are standing expectantly at a baggage claim rotunda. for an hour. and. a. half. No bags. WTF? Go to claims. Takes another half an hour. File a claim. Get on the shuttle to go get our car.

"Where's yo bags?" the shuttle driver asks.
"Lost!" we reply.
"Southwest?" he asks.
"Yup" in unison.
"heheheheh"
"yeah, pretty funny"

We get to the car. Click unlock. No dice. Click click. Nope.

P: battery's dead!
K: yup (I am filtering)
P: See if you can go find someone.
K: 'kay

Car gets jumped (thankfully), we drive off (speedily).

Seriously, two in one day? Dang. At least we gotta bison burger and a cookie on the way home. The hound is good for those who want to know. Doggy camp served him and us well.

Hopefully, we get our bags soon. Stay posted. As yet however, we can't even get a hold of the baggage claim crew. Am I the only person who thinks my bags are a priority? I don't need an answer . . .

On Being Spatially Disoriented

I have been thinking lately about how odd it is when you occupy a space for a considerable amount of time, call it home, and then sell that home (or someone else does) only to later walk through that space whilst other people inhabit it. I had this feeling once before when I drove past my childhood home on 6th to find that the people who purchased my parents' house had pretty well trashed the place. I had this disorienting experience again yesterday when we (P, her mom, dad and I) got a tour through the only house P lived in growing up (I also lived there for two summers). For those who don't know, P's parents are now in the process of building a beautifully spatious house, just a little ways down the road from their old one.

Anyway, to say that things have changed would be, to use a rhetorical term, litotes. This dentist, whom I have only seen in a tank top, has knocked down buildings, built additions, re-floored the entire house, added new countertops, expanded bedrooms, rearranged walking spaces, and put up logs (logs, logs, everyplace). This guy has messed with the place so much that it is nearly unrecognizable, and how weird to experience that? I think, though, that the most weirdest thing was that all of these changes could have been more effectively made by knocking the dang house down and starting all over. Then, at least, I wouldn't have to deal with the awkwardness of seeing this pseudo-relic of my past.

For those who have been there, check this out:

Musings on my Bff Kittay and Oregon

Since the last poetic debacle posted as "Home Improvements," P and I have been out of town visiting our peeps in Oregon. I say peeps because although we have spent a considerable amount of time with the family, I ran into my bff Kittay, his wife, mom and sister. "Ran into" sounds a bit too seredipitous, so it would be better to say that we met at Fudruckers (a burger joint) just outside of Portland this past Wednesday afternoon. In a happy chance of events, our vacay times and sites crossed over and we got to share some eats.



For those who don't know the Kittay, he was the best man in my wedding, a college roommate and teammate back in the days when we were more nimble. Though it should probably be said that Kittay seems quite nimble these days having run several marathons and since he is now preparing for the Ironman competition. I, however, am not so nimble unless you consider bouncing around to aerobic workout videos in the livingroom with the hound as "nimble creating activity."



In any event, it has been over two years since P and I have seen he and his wife and that frankly is too dang long. hear (see) that? too. dang. long. We haven't been back to Spokey town since moving, and they have yet to cross into Normal, so that has left us (me and Kittay) with a phone relationship if you know what I mean. It was good to see them (all).

What struck me as I sat there with them is that although time has passed and our lives (especially) have totally changed, these people are to me like comfort food: you always feel at home with them. So, anyway, here are a couple pics snapped at the site of the visit.

I have also included pics of (some) other things that Normal just can't touch such as: oceans, mountains, non-humid weather, good fish (seriously, what a sad day when the best shrimp in town is at a local tex-mex place), GOOD BOOKSTORES (I bought like 15 books), tax free purchases, Mariners baseball, non-square cut pizza (I will never get used to that, how ABnormal), low gas prices, non-greasy chinese food, and GOOD outlet shopping. We need to get back home.