One of these is not like the others

I know most moms like to have breakfast in bed or a fancy brunch or dinner on a day like today. And that's wonderful. I hope every mom -- and every woman who mothers -- had exactly the day they wanted.

As for me, I never do a good job of giving Jeff and Ali a list of things they should consider as suitable Mother's Day gifts. They always rise to the occasion, though, and I've been showered in flowers and gifts from the extreme to the silly in the 18 years I've qualified for attention on this annual day.

This year, though, they've outdone themselves.

• Flowers, yes. But this year's crop were new types AND there were fresh cut and some lilies to plant if the cold, cold rain ever stops.
• Jeff mowed the yard yesterday while Ali and I went to a Girl Talk brunch and then she had a study session and I worked out. This is a big deal because A: I wasn't expecting it and B: Jeff would rather clean toilets with a toothbrush than do yard work. That's my domain, and he gives me merciless grief when I fret over weeds or leaves or the general scrub-grass nature of our lawn.
• I even won a basket of wine at the brunch. We'll use the wine for an upcoming sleepover with Aunt La, Amy and Jenna.
• A King Rib feast greeted us when we got home, too.
• Ali and I spend the morning in my bed watching trashy TV. Jeff had gone off to basketball, so we had the house to ourselves, and it was glorious. His game was unexpectedly cancelled, so he came home early. He shook his head because he hates trashy TV, and he also brought us popcorn. For breakfast. Kind of. We had to leave Savannah and Chase still dealing with their LA adventure to go to a girls' movie: The Hustle. But we did it in our pajamas.
  
• "Let's be THOSE people," Ali said, when she suggested that instead of trinkets, her gift to me could be an experience. We were totally those people. The ticket-taker was a kid from Ali's school, and he greeted her by name. She didn't know him, but here's the thing: Even at Herron High School where kids give themselves new names, have hair of every pastel shade known to man (and some unknown) Ali's hair stands out. She may also be the school bully or its guardian. Or it might be her love of profanity for all I know, but even in that school where individuality is a celebrated art, she's recognizable."Yeah, I can't ever be a spy or disappear in a crowd," she said. 
• Jeff's opened our last bottle of Venus, an Agrapart & Fils champagne. It's one of the best champagnes we've ever had.
• Ali and I are about to finish off "Growing up Chrisley" because it's still rainy and cold out, which doesn't make for a hospitable environment for planting my new flowers.
• Oh! And there was a real gift, too. My sister Debbie made a corner shelving unit out of doors. It's super cute and will look perfect on my back porch. I can't wait for its delivery. It's extra special because it's a sister-made product. There aren't a lot of those around...
  
  

It may not be a fancy day, but it's been wonderful and just about as good a day as I could have ordered up. I think we're having breakfast for dinner..... which if I've been a very good mom, means pancakes. 

Hope you're having a great day. Whatever that means for you. (No: we did not brush our hair.)

Ali is 18: Part 2

The week got away from me, but Alison's 18th just kept getting better. Jeff came home and we opened family gifts once her friends left. As all good birthdays go, it started early and didn't end for a while.

Monday was a trip to the IMAX theater to see "Avengers End Game." Ali and Jeff have seen every Marvel movie ever made, and I've seen most of them. They laugh at me when I get something wrong as only serious Marvel nerds can do. It was super fun. Ali had seen it already and was hawk-eyed, watching Jeff for the big moments.

We all love it, and I don't care that they think my contention that that the Avengers would be seriously bad for the environment is a bad assessment of the franchise.

On Tuesday, Ali exercised her new right to vote and met our long-time precinct committee woman who was pleased to have another Democrat to add to the polling list.

She was slightly late to school, but when she flashed her sticker, "The teachers fawned all over me," so I didn't even get an email ratting her out for her tardiness.

We had dinner with Aunt La that evening and Ali was surprised with another extravagant addition to her jewelry box. "All my good jewelry has come from you," Ali breathed as she inserted  her new earrings. "Well, some from Grammie. And Mom. But yours is special like that."

All in all, a great birthday. And now we have an adult...

Birthday #18 Part 1

"So, Alison," I asked yesterday. "How do you want to spend the last day of your childhood?"

She shot me a look that perfectly captured the moment. Part sad, part excited, part happy. All Ali.

"Childishly," she said, finally, with a grin.

With Jeff out of town and Jenna awaiting a day when just she and Ali can celebrate, it was up to me to decide how far to take the plan to have her Herron High School posse over. I pretty much said yes to everything and added a bit here and there.

Below is a fairly accurate journal of what has transpired so far. Toddlers don't care - or often enjoy - a mom with a camera at a birthday party. Not only do teens care and general do not enjoy that, they probably have rights or something. But I do what I can:

Saturday the 4th/Birthday Eve: I drive Ali to a morning AP study session and then hit the gym before picking her back up. We hit the grocery on the way home. While I clean up from a fabulous dinner/champs and bourbon with Nikki and Ehren, Alison finishes homework and chores. She moves on to prepping the family room so everyone has space to veg, watch movies and eventually sleep. She steals half my pillows and scrounges storage for extra blankets before declaring herself satisfied.

4:30 p.m.: I drop Ali off at the HHS annual Food Truck/Art Fair where she met up with various friends and did her last (I assume) volunteer effort for the school swim team.

4:31 p.m.: I decide we haven't decorated enough and drive to the Dollar Tree in deference to the Captain, who will think I overdid it. But you can't overdo it if you shop at the Dollar Tree. #AmIRight?

5 p.m.: I start the process of creating a rainbow of tissue paper pom pom streamers to lead into the family room where movie night will ensue.

5:10 p.m: I tire of creating the pom poms and move on to banners and signs knowing the pom poms await.

5:20 p.m.: Back to the freaking pom poms that had seemed like such a good idea at the store. So much better than the original plan, which was to just hang streamers.

5:30 p.m.: My arms hurt. I curse the shreds of tissue paper scattered on the basement floor as if my rainbow has dandruff. (In actuality, I'm a bad pom pom maker and I've torn a few of the petals. I hide the damage as best I can and remove the evidence.) I wonder if she will care that I went to the trouble. I stretch. I have a snack. Back to the freaking pom poms.

6:30 p.m.: Done with the goddamned pom poms. For the record, I had to unfold and fluff 480 petals to form 30 pom poms. I'm 100 percent certain the plain streamers would have sufficed. I stretch my back and wonder if I should finish the champagne left over from the night before.

7:30 p.m.: I pick her up and we hightail it home to finish anything she finds missing and to prepare for guest arrival. She is surprised and pleased at the additional decor.

8 p.m.: Guests begin to arrive and I get to interact before they hightail it downstairs to start their movie marathon. I settle into the couch to greet stragglers and listen in. They find the noise makers and it sounds like an elephant rumble. This is repeated each time a new guest arrives.

8-10:30 p.m.: In past years when I did this, it was largely giggles and screams that would float up the stairs. With most of the girls in their advanced teens it's screams and laughter and more than a bit of profanity.

10:30 p.m.: The champagne long finished, I relocate to bed as the movie noise overtakes conversation and goofy outbursts.

Sunday (Ali's actual birthday)

7:30 -9 a.m. : I would normally awake her with presents and a fun breakfast, but we'll put off family birthday stuff to this evening when Jeff is home. While the coffee brews and my paper awaits, I pull out the three pounds of bacon and ponder whether to cook it all. I do, thinking I'll have leftovers for the coming week. I cut fruit, prepare a buffet of juices and milk and cereal. I decide I'd be an excellent Bed&Breakfast host.

9:05: I creep downstairs to see if anyone is awake. It looks like the aftermath of a tsunami in the family room, but somehow the pompoms have survived essentially intact. I creep back upstairs to enjoy my coffee and paper.

9:45 a.m.: Ali stumbles upstairs and tells me it might be time to wake the girls. I start pulling out the food. The birthday girl, apparently having already collected gifts the night before, wakes the girls with one of the noisemakers. Screams and curses fill the air. I wonder if the neighbors are awake.

10 a.m.: Everyone is upright and filing in for food. I turn off my country music and turn on whatever it is they listen to as they brunch on the porch.

10:30 a.m.: The bake-fest is on. Despite the fact that we have a small kitchen and there are other rooms in the house, the bakers fill one half as they bake and mix and hand  bowls and spoons around to be feasted upon, those not baking sit on the floor or on stools in the kitchen. I thread myself back and forth putting stuff away, cleaning a bit and making sure everyone has what they need. Several of the girls offer to help, which is nice. It's a great collection of girls. I love each of them. There's no champagne for them, but fancy glasses are always fun.

10:30 a.m.-12 p.m.: The music blares, there are stops for dance sessions. Among the pop chart music are bits of Phinneas & Ferb tunes like "Squirrels in my pants." They take breaks to watch videos. They sing. They pose. They eat the baked goods as if they haven't devoured three pounds of bacon, cereal, toast and fruit. We discuss Chinese food vs. Taco Bell for lunch.

12:30 p.m.: I've retreated to table off the back porch and am about to order Chinese food. From the sound of things, they're back downstairs watching movies or possibly moving on to video games.

We'll see what happens next. I have to go get Chinese food now.

The Exhibitionist

There's an exhibitionist in my neighborhood, and I have to admit, I'm hooked: I spy on her all the time, and I have for months.

Well, not ALL the time. She's not always out there showing off. And to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure it's a she. I think it's a she, but I haven't zoomed in like it seems to want me to. Even though it's a daily show, that degree of intimacy seems a step too far...

I noticed her over the winter after I moved my workstation off the back porch. I used to sit at the kitchen counter, which gave me a view of the front yard, but lately I've been at the dining room table, which offers up my neighbor's yard and a 5-feet-or-so tall shepherd's hook that holds a bird feeder. Lois has a lot of bird feeders and has a really pretty yard.

My little friend spends a lot of time out there visiting an aerial, red-roofed bird feeder that stands under the shade of a huge maple tree.

Back in the winter when I first spied her, she was just contemplating the act she's since perfected. I suspect she was hungry and a tiny bit perplexed as to why Lois would be setting out food for birds but not for her. I could practically hear her wondering why she was left out of the free-food equation. She's not the one who decorates the car windows, after all.

The first time (that I noticed anyway) she planned to foil the unfair feeding program, she got about a foot up the shepherd's hook and then slid right down. She didn't give up, easily. Before she abandoned her quest that day, she had gotten maybe halfway up, only to slide down yet again.

She was back the next day. I pictured her going back to her drey or hole in a tree or wherever she lives and pumping tiny, squirrel-sized barbells made of walnuts and twigs. It's a step too far to imagine her mixing up tiny protein shakes in her little kitchen, but she must have powered down on the nuts because she kept coming back to the shepherd's hook to try again, and I swear she's buffed up.

With her new upper body strength, she's perfected her foraging.  It's not uncommon to see her having a snack while hanging upside down from the feeder. Mostly, though, she makes the thing sway, or she just scrapes out a handful of the seeds to scatter on the ground where she makes like a cow in clover. Occasionally a friend will join her. This is mostly why I think it's a girl -- she shares the wealth. I think a male squirrel would bare his little teeth and dare the lesser muscled rat to a fight to the bushy-tailed death.

This squirrel has six-pack abs and some seriously shredded biceps. She'd probably be able to take on a small dog and win. I do wonder if the birds she's routinely depriving of seeds are going to mount a counter attack anytime soon. So far there's no hint of it, but if it comes to that, my money's on the squirrel.

I'm no wildlife photographer and for an exhibitionist, she doesn't really like having me document her antics, but these are the best I've gotten in the past several months.

Is it the same squirrel every time? Who can say. All I know is it took a while for the little rodent to stop sliding down the pole like an exhausted stripper and there's not a constant stream of squirrels at the trough.

I will not cry. I will not be sad. I will Boiler up.

This is the picture I used nearly 18 years ago to introduce Alison to friends I hadn't seen in a while.

I think the subject line of that email was "What I've been up to lately" or something like that.






Here's the latest announcement I have for that little climber.  →→→→

At least two of the people who will be most thrilled about this news were on that email of August 2001.

Andy Seiwert, a diehard Boilermaker, is one of Jeff's oldest friends. They play basketball and softball together. I love Andy like a foul-mouthed brother, but we don't often talk on the phone.

Last night when I saw his name on my phone, I panicked a bit because he and Jeff were playing basketball. Possibly the last time Andy called me on a basketball night, he was calling to say Jeff had thrown his back out.

But last night, all I heard was "Hail Purdue."

It's hard to believe we're at this point, but yesterday I picked up her cap and gown for her high school graduation, so it's really happening. Graduation is the evening of May 22 -- a Wednesday -- at Old National Centre downtown.  We're still working through plans for a larger celebration. She has her birthday ahead of this.

A short retrospective:

 

Go West, they said.

If you are my Facebook Friend, you already know that our normal extravagant Spring Break trip was interrupted this year when my father-in-law was grounded by his doctors. He's recovering (thank goodness) from a heart attack but isn't yet up to flying. Much as we love our Turks & Caicos getaway, no one wanted to go without him.

The final word came down four days before we were to leave. Ali and I were up for making a short trip somewhere fun, but it wasn't until two days before our originally planned departure that the Captain dove into the spontaneous travel pool with us. He and I have talked often about a Grand Canyon trip, and he was still talking about photos shared by Eric, Tracy, Susan and Jeff last year from their trip out west.

About 3 a.m. that morning, he plopped into bed to say he had a plan, plane tickets and lodging for some of the trip. I'm sure I mumbled something supportive and went back to sleep. It's possible that I could have helped more than just agreeing to go -- my offering had been day trips to Chicago and St. Louis and maybe Kentucky to hike -- but I couldn't have improved on what was to come.

We covered about 850 miles, starting by flying into Vegas where we picked up a small SUV and drove to the Hoover Dam. It would have been fun there even without the ice cream and Jeff and my shared background. (Doesn't everyone find love amongst water, sewer, natural gas, telecom and electric utility regulation?)

We got to our hotel late and I totally missed the hot tub outside our door. I did not miss picking up a bottle of wine when we stopped for snacks, all of which proved essential to our trek. We had packed water bottles, but there was a case of water for $2.69 at the grocery where we stopped, and it proved as essential as the wine. Plus, a bargain!

Still thinking of that hot tub, and after a day of hiking in Zion National Park where we could have died about 18 different times by falling into the rocky abyss, I tried to talk Jeff out of the Airbnb he'd booked in a place called Panquitch, Utah. It was an old sheriff's house and I was certain it would not have a hot tub.

I was right, but it did have a clawfoot bathtub, which I quickly claimed and had a glass or two of my wine. That was followed up by a great meal in the tiny town and an even better breakfast. I asked our waitress how to pronounce the name of the town. "I just call it Hell," she said.

Because we'd survived our trip to Angel's Landing in Zion -- there's a sign that warns you that 6 people have fallen to their deaths on the climb -- we thought we deserved to try the Flying M's $5 cinnamon roll that claimed to be the biggest you'd ever see. It was. We shared some of it with strangers, had some ourselves and then added the leftovers to our provisions. Jeff had some for a midnight snack and I had the rest for breakfast. It was that good and that big.

I'd never spent so much time on the ground out west, and the change in topography was amazing. At one point, we were at an elevation of 7700 feet. Indiana is 1,000 feet at its height and Phoenix is about the same.

It was near 80 degrees at the Hoover Dam and we worked up a sweat at Zion. We we woke up to 19 degrees in Utah. We drove through the Red Canyon, which was a barren wasteland of beautiful rocks to get to Bryce Canyon, which had part of its rim closed due to snowfall and then it was back to desert for Horseshoe Bend. I think my socks are stained forever with red rock dust.

The Grand Canyon is, well, grand. It's hard to describe it or to get the full effect from photos. If you go, find Shoshone Trail. It's not well-traveled and we were alone for the mile or so walk to a rocky finger poking out over the canyon. Jeff was freaking out a little bit as Ali and I got to the edge to look over into the miles and miles of space. There was a family of four there before us who were packing up, and a couple who didn't stay long. We'd said goodbye to the other family and the three of us were gazing out into the miles of space and just enjoying the quiet.

After a while of searching the landscape, I remarked that it was odd that we couldn't spy some sort of movement out there. "You'd think there'd be some evidence of wildlife," I said.

Just then, I hear the mom of the other family. They hadn't left after all. Because a herd of elk were coming out onto the peninsula with us. By this time, I was sitting out on the point alone. Jeff and Ali were standing closer to the family. The elk just kept coming until there were about 13 of them feeding off to one side of the path.

 They weren't moose-sized, but they weren't small and they were totally blocking the path. Thinking there was safety in numbers and worried that they'd come out to where I was surrounded by stone and air, he made me come close to the group. We stayed there about 20 minutes before they ambled back on their way.

Alison was more than a little freaked and I kept telling her that elks are vegans. We weren't in danger. She reminded me that she'd seen a Cougar Crossing sign. "I'm not worried about them eating us," she said. "I'm worried about what eats them."

Jeff was worried about us annoying them to the point that they'd rush or kick us. I was pretty sure we'd be fine. When we finally got back off the point, we found a bunch of other elk in the forest. Apparently the lunch rush is on at the Shoshone Trail shortly after noon.

We decided we weren't going to have a more memorable experience at the Grand Canyon and set off for Prescott, Arizona, where Jeff planned to meet a baseball buddy. Ali and I had planned to do our own thing, but we all went out together and had a great time with Ted, who has to be Prescott's best ambassador.

We had just enough time to pop in for a bit to Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home before Ali and I were rewarded with spa treatment and a night at the Biltmore Arizona.

You probably deserve a trip there before you die. If you plan it right, you could just end things there and have had a fulfilling life. It was at the Biltmore where Jeff may have had his best moment -- and he wasn't even there for it.


Ali, who had tested each of the eight pools, spent part of the morning at the deepest one where she was doing laps. While she was there, the staff started setting up for a water aerobics class for a group of ladies who had probably been at the Biltmore when it was opened in 1929. Rather than interrupt them, she left to visit the spa hot tub. As she was leaving there, she ran across one of the ladies, who was making her way back to her room wearing her hotel robe and swimming cap.

"Oh, dear, your skin is like a porcelain doll," the lady exclaimed.

Ali smiled and thanked her and then asked if the class were over. The lady said it was and then said the thing that make the Captain preen. "You must have been raised right," she said and thanked Ali for graciously giving the ladies their space.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip and we're ready to go back.