My Weblog

Girl vs. Boy

I was so happy when I learned, eight glorious years ago, that our first child would be a girl.  I looked forward to years of sweet girly activities like tea parties and princess dress-up games. 

And I have not been disappointed.  My girl loves to dress up, to paint her toe-nails and to go out for girls' lunches.  Just look at this photo to see how sweet and demure she is.

As further proof, I'll show you how she treats her brother.  We went for a short hike in the woods a couple weekends ago and she patiently followed after him to make sure that he was okay.

When he climbed into our play tent, she sneaked up and whipped it off of him.  Checking to make sure all was safe inside, I'm sure.  For some reason, he didn't appreciate her concern for his safety.

Finally, when he went back inside, she "checked on him" by poking the tent with a stick.  She's so nurturing.

"Is she gone?"

Yep, I love having a girl -- they're so sweet and demure . . .

The Missing Link

Oh, what the heck.   I am enjoying your comments so much, I might as well crank out another blog post this week and see if you all will take the bait  three times in one week.  

Um, ok, so hmmmm.  I've got nothing.  Be right back to see if I have any more embarrassing photos of my family.  You readers seem to  like those (and my extended family doesn't live here in Arizona so I am free to post away at least until the first lawsuit is filed) . . ..

Well, I didn't find any of those either, but I did unearth something even better:  some very rare photos that I took back in my days on assignment for National Geographic.  These particular photos were from a trip to the wilds of a place called the Mogollon Rim.  It is the home of tribe of people whose nomadic lifestyle involves a semi-monthly migration from the driest, hottest desert to a more temperate, mountainous climate.   I chose to observe them in their mountain habitat.

Not knowing how I would be received, I approached carefully.  The natives were a bit hostile at first.

But, after I offered them Goldfish to prove that I meant them no harm, they brought be back to their camp.  As you can see, their prehistoric way of life dates back millions of years.  They use only crude stone tools.
 

They build rough, temporary shelters which they share with their livestock:
 

And they engage in ritual tests of strength and agility involving tree climbing. 

Even the reluctant young are forced to climb.

Though they quickly master the skill on their own.  Indeed, we may have discovered the missing link here.

One interesting anthropological note:  this tribe may have become so skilled at climbing trees due to their relative awkwardness at traveling the forest floor.   I observed them sending out a war party to attack and defeat a neighboring tribe (though I never saw the other tribe -- they were so silent and skillfully hidden in the forest one might almost think them imaginary), only to see the triumphant warriors return home and repeatedly clonk their own heads on the low branches of their own home tree.   I can also now offer conclusive proof of what scientists have heretofore only hypothesized:  that the modern-day practice of  crying and wailing "I WANT MY MOOOOOMMMMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!" dates well back to prehistoric times. 

I'm off to contact the Museum of Natural History.

What Not To Do At the State Fair

Let's say -- just hypothetically -- that you were going to the State Fair.  And that you were going to bring your kids who might be, just for the sake of argument, 6 and 8 years old.  Here would be my advice in such a purely theoretical situation:

First, do not try to convince your spouse to ride the chair-lift thing that goes over the whole fair.  While you will have a marvelous time looking out at everything and swinging your feet in the open air, your spouse -- who is afraid of heights -- will vow NEVER EVER TO RIDE ON THAT THING AGAIN. EVER.   

Secondly, do not wear a baseball cap on the scary Haunted House ride because it will be slapped off your head by some "scary" slappy plastic things that come down in the dark.  It will then become lodged underneath the car behind you (which just might contain your husband and aforementioned 6 year old child) causing the car to become stuck inside the scary Haunted House for an extended length of time.  Your spouse, 6 year-old child and the ride attendants will hypothetically be very angry.  If you ever find yourself in such a situation, walk away quickly without taking any pictures and say "Hat?  What hat?  I wasn't wearing a hat" and try to surreptitiously fluff up your hair.

Unless you have a degree in zoology, do not attempt to enter the petting zoo.  Your children will want to know what these animals are, and they will get their very first inkling that maybe mom might not know everything there is to know, after all.  The inevitable slide into pre-teen and teen rebellion will begin.

Do not allow your 8 year-old child to climb the extremely high climbing wall.  She's a very small person and that's a very high wall.

Finally, and most importantly, do not allow your older child to go off with your spouse to ride the log flume ride, which your younger child refuses to ride because he might get wet.  There will inevitably be a long wait for the log flume ride, during which your 6 year old will get very bored and will start looking at things like this.

Whatever you do, do NOT under any circumstances be lulled into letting your bored 6 year old try to throw a dart at a teeny tiny little star about 12 feet away, thinking that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY IN HELL that he could ever in a million years even hit the board, let alone that teeny tiny little star.  Because, if you were to ever theoretically let him try, you would almost certainly be going home with a giant banana.  You heard me, a giant banana.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Is Your Family As Weird As Mine?

Tap, tap, tap.  Hello?  This thing on?

Oh hi!  It's me.  I've had people clamoring for more blog posts, so I'm back with a command performance.  Well, there has been no clamoring that has been actually communicated out loud to me -- but I'm confident there has been a lot of silent clamoring going on out there.   And I'm sure you all will agree that's the most compelling clamoring of all.   Silently clamor if you agree.                    

OK, good.

So, let's see.  I did want to share some photos that I took over the holidays because they relate back to previous posts about my woeful lack of sporting abilities.   And, after these past holidays, I came to an epiphany:   I am not to blame for this sports shortcoming.  After all, I did take a shot at becoming a Little League star, even if I couldn't hit, catch or even spit properly.

So, who's fault was it?  My family's, of course.  Oh wait, NOW I can hear the clamoring.   But, I think after you see the evidence, there will be little room for doubt.   You see, over the holidays, my mom and stepdad (aka Grandma Linda and Grandpa JJ) came to visit, along with my sister, Dianne, and her son, Austin.  To burn off some of the mountain of food we consumed, I suggested a walk to the park.  We brought along a frisbee, soccer ball and soccer goal, thinking that we could play frisbee or soccer, like normal American families do.

At the park, I was keeping an eye on the kids on the playground and riding their bikes, when "the Fam" moved over to the field, presumably to play a nice conventional,  All-American game of soccer or, maybe, Ultimate Frisbee.   So, imagine my surprise when I went over to join in and discovered that the game was not really a Frisbee catch, or Ultimate Frisbee, or soccer, but was a weird sports mutation called:

Keep Away Frisbee Catch.  Here's Grandma ruthlessly keeping the frisbee out of the little hands of her grandson.  She looks like she's enjoying it too.

The vicious game pitted sister against brother:
 
Hold on, did I say Keep Away Frisbee Catch?  What I meant to say was Keep Away/Monkey in the Middle Frisbee Catch:

Here's Grandma taunting another grandchild.   Those grannies are surprisingly competitive.

Oh, wait.   I forgot.  It was really Keep Away/Monkey in the Middle/TACKLE Frisbee Catch.

Has a little girl ever taken such glee in trouncing her Grandpa?  I think not.



Oh, and did I mention that you had to kick the soccer ball at the same time?  Making it Keep Away/Monkey in the Middle/TACKLE/Soccer Ball Kicking Frisbee Catch.

I mean, seriously, readers, this is what passes for a sport in our family.  So, is it any wonder that:  (a)  I grew up with no conventional sports skills whatsoever, and (b) the people at parks give us a very wide berth when we step onto the field? 

On the other hand, if they ever add Keep Away/Monkey in the Middle/TACKLE/Soccer Ball Kicking Frisbee Catch to the Olympics, we are going to clean up.  And, more importantly, Keep Away/Monkey in the Middle/TACKLE/Soccer Ball Kicking Frisbee Catch turns out to be a really fun game, so the heck with conventional sports anyway.  Maybe my family knew what they were doing all along . . . .

He's Gone Pro

If you read yesterday's post about my traumatic childhood encounter with Little League, or some of my earlier posts about T-ball politics, you know by now that I am hopelessly clueless when it come to kids' sports.   The whole process mystifies me from how you find out about the different leagues, to how to get your kids on a team with their friends, to what you are supposed to bring for a snack (and why on my son's soccer team, does everyone actually bring 2 snacks to every game?  what's with the snack inflation?)  and everything in between.

So, readers, I'm turning to you with an important question today:  How do you motivate your child to become a ruthlessly competitive winning machine  in the sports world to achieve power and glory and bragging rights for their parents?  Ok, OKAY, that's not my real question (or at least I've learned not to admit it publicly).  What I meant to say was that my REAL question is:   how do you help your child to achieve their "fullest athletic potential" out there on the sports field or court or whatever?  Or, failing that, to at least try to participate in the actual sport taking place around them instead of standing in the field pretending to be, say,  an airplane or Power Ranger?

Case study for today:  my son, who is currently in a soccer league with some kindergarten buddies.   Because of my traumatic childhood encounter with Little League, I SWORE that my kids would start sports at a young age when all the other kids were just as inept as they were.  So, when Daniel was about 6 months old, we started propping him up in the soccer goal and kicking soccer balls at him to get him accustomed to the feel of the ball and toughen him up.  Just kidding, people.  Sheesh. 

But, he did play soccer starting at about age 3, and that is the truth. And swimming and ultimate cage  fighting.  So, by now, he's pretty good at soccer and he's finally graduated to playing real games.  The "trouble"  with our boy is that he's just a little too nice and too laid back (which is why we supportive parents are guiding him toward the soccer and not the ultimate cage fighting at this point).   He spends a lot of the game standing back waiting very politely for his turn with the ball (oh, and gasping for air because they are working HARD out there and it's still in the 90s here).

We tried imparting our parental wisdom to him, explaining that in soccer, you really had to try to get in there, keep working, get the ball, drive for the net, blah, blah, blah.  We'd cheer him on to "go get 'em, champ" and that sort of cutting-edge, life-coach  inspirational thing, but he continued to hang back and watch much of the game like a disinterested by-stander. 

Until a couple weeks ago, on the way to soccer, Gary said (in a move that was totally unexpected and not prescreened by me, by the way), "I'll give you $10 if you score a goal today."  Well, I could immediately see the light bulb of inspiration go on in Daniel's head, and the contract negotiations began (in fact, Daniel  may have more potential as a sports agent than an athlete).   Given that the boy had heretofore shown little interest or potential for scoring any goals, it didn't seem unreasonable when Gary agreed to pay $10 for any goal scored all season.

Well, readers, we have a changed boy on our hands.  It was a good thing that we arrived late to that first game, because within minutes of stepping onto the field, Daniel scored his first goal -- barreling down the field with a fierce, single-minded determination seen most commonly in wolverines and Mandalorian bounty hunters.  If we had arrived on-time to that game, who knows how much that day might have cost us?

 

Our most recent game was Saturday, a week after having been on a carefree, soccer-free family vacation for Fall Break.  We thought that Daniel might have forgotten the unholy bargain of money for goals.  But, upon relentlessly charging down the field to rack up his first goal, he ran over shouting "I WON TEN DOLLARS !!!!!!!!!!!!!"  That game ended up costing us another $20, even taking into account the time that Daniel was side-lined after somebody elbowed him in the eye. 

As you can see, we have obviously found the key to unlock our son's competitive drive and he is more enthusiastic about soccer than ever.  The question for you readers is whether this is a good thing or not?  Are we setting a bad precedent?  Might we end up spending all our hard-earned money on soccer goals or homeruns or slam-dunks and have to go to my son begging him for loans to buy the groceries?  Should we tell him he should be playing for "love of the game" alone?  Set a "salary cap"?  Or are we giving him valuable experience in "professional" sports?  What do you think, athletic readers?

Kids' Sports and Other Trauma

Lately, we've been getting a lot of fliers from the kids' school about the various sports teams they can join.  Between you and me,  I get stressed just reading them.  Even as a secure adult who is no longer subjected to excruciating torture of  "picking teams" and communal showers after gym class,  kids' sports  makes me feel all nervous and sweaty inside (yes, not just outside but sweaty inside).  I think this visceral reaction stems back my one ill-fated foray into competitive sports back when I was 9.   [Insert those wavy ripples from 70s TV signifying "dream-sequence" or "going back in time" here.]

When I was 9, I had a friend in my class named Michelle who all the girls admired.  Michelle was a tall, blonde dancer [she even went off to a fancy NYC dance academy after graduating high school].  She was interesting because she was half  Lebanese and could make Tabouli and she was proud of it.  She was smart and knew all about cool stuff like unicorns and greek gods.   She was coordinated and athletic and, despite all that, she was a nice kid.  

Well, Michelle got it in her head that we were going to sign up for Little League that year.  This was the year after the courts forced Little League to admit girls to the teams, so I'm not sure if this was some sort of emerging feminist statement on Michelle's part or if she genuinely thought baseball was fun.  Unlike Michelle, I went through most of my childhood in a state of deep and profound cluelessness, so I knew nothing of feminism or baseball (or fashion or hair styling techniques for that matter), but I knew one thing:  if Michelle was signing up, I was too.

The first set-back that my clueless little brain never saw coming was that when the day came, I really signed up for Little League and Michelle didn't.  She -- or her parents -- had obviously wised up and decided that maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all.   So, I was on my own in the male-dominated Little League world.  Not that it would have made a difference -- with, like, 3 girls in the whole league, the chances of Michelle and I being on the same team were zero.  But that didn't occur to me at the time.  Did I mention the cluelessness thing?

As any semi-sentient being would have predicted,  I was placed on a team with all boys.  Which led to the second problem that my clueless 9 year-old self didn't anticipate:  the boys were good at baseball.  Me?  Um, not so much.  Of course, the boys began playing t-ball at age 4 or so, and by age 9 could hit, catch, spit and scratch -- all the essential baseball skills.  By contrast, I grew up with an older sister playing dolls and our favorite pretend game, "Kitty Cat and Mommy" (and yes, the title pretty accurately described the whole game concept).  Sometimes we roller skated and sometimes we jumped rope, and we even had some little boxing gloves with which we'd  ineffectually try to whallup our dad on occasion,  but I don't recall us ever voluntarily trying to hit a ball with a bat or playing catch.  Tomboys, we were not.

As a result, you will probably not be shocked to learn that I completely and utterly sucked at baseball.  I could not hit that d*mn hard, fast little ball and I'd cringe when someone would throw it at me (or to me, depending on your point of view).  I could not get within 20 feet of a pop fly (in fact, to this day I still can't figure out how you're supposed to guess where it'll land).  The boys wouldn't talk to me or sit next to me on the bench, and, most mortifying of all, the cutest boy in school was on our team.   That's right, Anthony F. -- "the Fizz", an Italian heart-throb along the lines of the then wildly popular Scott Baio, was on my team.  And, I could sense his disdain wafting across the field at me all the way from his position at first base to mine in far, far left field.

Because my brain has mercifully blocked out much of what happened during that season, I'm still not sure why I didn't just quit.  I don't know if it never occurred to me that quitting was an option, or if my parents made me stay with it,  or if it was because my family all seemed so proud that I was on the team or because they loved photographing me in my baggy, hot  flannel uniform.  I swear, there are more humiliating pictures circulating of me in that uniform than all the other photos that were taken of me in my entire childhood combined. 

Just because I value you readers so much, I'll swallow what's left of my pride and share one with you.  Feel free to laugh; laughter is good for the soul.  And, when you're done laughing, then feel free to feel really, really guilty for laughing at such a pathetic, clueless little 9 year old girl and go confess, which is also good for the souls of you heartless child-mocking sinners.

[I don't remember those sneakers at all, by the way, but I still kinda like 'em.] 

Perhaps because they enjoyed seeing me in this goofy get-up so much, my family did try to help me acquire some rudimentary baseball skills.  For example, they bought me a Johnny Bench Batter-Up, which was a ball on a horizontal pole that you would wind up and then try to hit as it swung back around.   This seemed like a good idea until my sister flung the ball at me in a fit of sibling rage one day (totally unrelated to "Kitty Cat and Mommy", I'm sure) and knocked one of my front teeth loose.  Eating baby food for a couple weeks while my tooth healed did not help my 9 year old image and most definitely did not help impress the god-like Fizz.

The end of this Cinderella Story?   Just like in the movies, of course we went on to win the championship of our division.  I'm not making that up, either.  We did win the championship and I did get a trophy, which in some ways I didn't deserve at all (since even with the help of Johnny Bench, I was more hindrance than help to my team) and in some ways, I probably deserved more than any other kid on the team.   I'm not sure which is more true.   What I do know is that I'm not doing this whole kids' sports thing on my own this time.   So, when I ask for advice on kids' sports -- and rest assure that I will be asking very, very soon -- you readers now know that I really, truly do need all the help I can get.   

So, anyone else have any humiliating sports stories they'd like to get off their chest???  Don't abandon me here on my own again . . . .

A Monumental Day

You know how travel magazines always purport to share those pristine "undiscovered" places on the planet that only insiders know about?  Well friends, I have a treat for you today because -- "thanks" to my hubby, Gary -- we discovered one of those places.

It all started with a brief blurb in Arizona Highways Magazine.  And, as an aside, if you want a magazine with some of the most beautiful landscape photography you'll ever see, Arizona Highways is it.  Well, awhile back, Gary pulled out this blurb on a drive/hike you can take up on the forested Mogollon rim of Arizona.  The hike takes you through the woods to a monument that was built to memorialize the  Battle of Big Dry Wash between the Apaches and white soldiers in 1882.   So with visions of monuments in our heads (the  grandiouse Washington Monument!  The Lincoln Memorial!), we decided to go on this hike. 

Well, that was either (a) a fortuitous start to an amazing adventure, if you ask Gary, or (b) the first big mistake, if you ask some of the other victims, er I mean, people who went along for the "three hour tour"  that day.    The "helpful" article said that all you had to do was drive 12 miles down the "well-maintained" forest road 300 to get there.  All I can say is:  if this was well-maintained, I'd hate to see the rough roads.  

It wasn't too bad to start with.  Bumpy, yes.  Curvy, yes.  Scary when another car came in the other direction, yes.  But I could live with that.  Here's the road.

At about 2 miles in, we passed a sign for Potato Lake which was about another 2 miles to the left.  My attempts to divert the expedition to a nice, short lakeside outing were in vain.

So, we soldiered on.  We saw fewer and then no other people on the road.  It went from bumpy to bone-jarring, then teeth rattling.  The trees became blackened husks, agonized and stunted by recent forest fires.

The road dropped perilously on one side, forcing us to a bone-jarring, teeth-rattling crawl:

But our driver gripped the wheel with steely determination and pressed on, refusing to hear of any possible retreat.

Finally, after an HOUR of driving on this painful road to purgatory, we approached the long-anticipated 12 mile mark.  We were just about there!  Our hearts raced as we looked eagerly for signs of the Monument appearing majestically out of the forest!  But to our dismay, at the 12 mile mark, we saw only one thing:  a sign pointing to another, even worse road to the left, and saying "Monument, 7 miles".

Well, friends, I admit that some of us lost heart at that point.  We begged for a return to Potato Lake, for a return to civilization and sanity.  We wept for paved roads and accurate mile makers.  But, as you have probably discerned, our fearless leader was not to be deterred.  No way, no how.  We had to "KNOW", he said -- what is this elusive Monument that merited it's own 20 mile road hacked through the most brutal terrain???  If we don't go, we'll always wonder, he said.  It'll haunt our very dreams and nightmares.

So, once again we forged on, in 4 wheel drive as the road became pocked with huge craters and ruts and blemished with boulders.  We forged on PAST the 7 mile point when we encountered another sign saying "Monument, 2 miles" to the left.  And finally, finally, the road just ended.

YES, we had made it.  Or had we????  There simply was no road left, but there was no sign of a monument either.  We looked up, expecting it to be towering over the trees, maybe a big white marble dome like the Jefferson Memorial.  We looked for more signs.  Nothing.  We must have to hike to it, we thought.  Surely a monument as grandiose as the Battle of Big Dry Wash Monument would be really, well, monumental!  So, we set off hiking and a few yards away stumbled across this.

Yes, readers, that is the Monument of the Battle of Big Dry Wash.  That stubby lump of rock and plaque  is the reason we trekked over 20 miles on some of the most inhospitable road in North America.

I will let you judge for yourself whether it would be worth the journey to visit this  particular  undiscovered spot.   As for me, next time I'm taking the detour to Potato Lake.  I hear it's gonna be the next hot tourist spot.

I Have a Thing for Tikis

I'm going to share something with you all that most people don't know about me.  I have a thing for Tikis.  Yes, Tikis.    I'm sure you are now just realizing that I have depths to my personality that few people can imagine.  Or not.

I can't quite put my finger on why I like Tikis so much.  Maybe it's the fact that they are so tropical, so they remind me of lush rain forests and pristine beaches on remote, volcanic islands.  Or, maybe I am the reincarnation of a long-gone cannibal princess.  Or maybe I just like clunky wood statues.

Whatever the reason, I like Tikis.  Which is why I look forward every year to our wedding anniversary when I get to visit Tikis.   Because every year, my true love Gary and I fly the 20 hours or so to return to the romantic and exotic spot where we spent our honeymoon -- Bali, Indonesia.

Er, that was the plan anyway.  You see, we did spend our honeymoon in Bali and we always planned that on our 10th wedding anniversary, Gary and I would return -- glorious and triumphant -- to Bali and relive those intoxicating days of young love.  But, when our 10th anniversary rolled around, it turned out that we had two smallish children who somehow just didn't fit into the second honeymoon on a distant exotic island picture.  Never saw that coming.

So, with our glamorous Bali plan smashed in small, sandy shards at our feet, we racked our brains for the next best thing.  And hurray! We did come up with a place that was exotic and tropical and even has a beach!  And it's right here in the Phoenix area, saving us that pesky 20 hour plane ride.   Because fortunately for us, our 10th anniversary coincided with the opening of the new Trader Vic's in Phoenix.   That 10th Anniversary dinner was such a smashing success for the whole family (yes, the kids came along), that we have spent every  subsequent anniversary at TVs.   We just had our 13th Anniversary and we returned -- more or less glorious and triumphant -- to Trader Vics for dinner.

The best thing about Trader Vic's is, of course, the Tiki statues [well, we really all know it's the  fruity drinks, but this is a family blog, so let's just go with the Tikis for the sake of argument].  I like to photograph them:

And buy them drinks:

 

And then, after they're all liquored up, I like to sidle up to them and get a little more friendly.

ok, so I got a little carried away last year.  

But, this year, we were more mellow.  We hit the beach:

 

Lookin' good in our tropical clothes:

And we only lit ONE thing on fire.  How's that for restraint?

 

For, the record, we did NOT light Julie on fire, she was behind the fire on our little table hibachi.

So, take it from me, there's no need to trek all the way to some foreign land for an exotic, tropical vacation.  Just go to Trader Vic's and drink a few of these

 

You won't know the difference.  See?  We are blissfully happy -- Bali or no Bali.

 

FOBTY

I don't know how you daily bloggers do it every day.   I've gotten so far behind that it's become almost intimidating to me to think about blogging.   The thought of all you readers out there looking disapprovingly down the Internet at me, impatiently tapping your feet, wondering what the heck I'm doing with all my free time.  I mean when you stop to think about it, it's really your fault that I haven't been blogging, and you should be ashamed of yourselves. 

You are out there, right? 

Dang, now who do I blame?

Anyhow, I'm going to ease back in gently with a couple of From Our Blog To Yours challenges from the Sweet Shoppe.  The first challenge was to post a scrapbook layout that makes me happy.  That can't be too hard, right?  Here's one now:

Hey, that was easy.   So easy, in fact, I think I'll do it again:

I love pictures that show kids having some carefree fun, like Daniel vogue-ing in the coffee shop without worrying about having to look cool (though I suspect he did think his Power Ranger moves were very cool), and Julie blowing bubbles without worrying about all the slippery bubble potion running down her arm and dripping on her flip-flops  (which my grown-up self hates).

Speaking of carefree fun, the second challenge was a little trivia challenge about the movie Grease.  I only scored 11 out of 15.  Wanna see if you can beat me?  It's here:
http://www.allthetests.com/quiz25/quizpu.php?testid=1215894286

I should have done better with this quiz because this was the first movie that I went to on a "date" as a kid -- ok, it really wasn't a date date since I was in 5th grade, but I went with my "boyfriend", Frankie, who I thought was really awesome because he was an older man --  in 6th grade.  And I should have done better with the quiz because we had the Grease 8 track album and my sister Dianne and I could hand-jive like nobody's business. 

So, how did you do on the quiz?  I bet  Frankie would ace it.

The Big Ones That Didn't Get Away

In my last post, we were discussing how we went on vacation just to visit a dog.  Yes, he's a great dog -- he's a big, enthusiastically happy retriever who was absolutely delighted to have 2 small people to play with all week and treat him like a celebrity.  Still, we felt that we should at least try to schedule a couple of activities that didn't involve throwing a slobbery tennis ball on our vacation.  

And so it was that we decided to take the kids fishing, that age-old rite of childhood passage.  I remember fishing for sunnies when I was a kid - catching them with balls of squished Wonder Bread and a cheap fishing pole (even sometimes just a stick with string and a hook), and trying to convince other kids to take the wildly flapping fish off the hook for me.  But we now live in the desert, where it turns out there are no local fishing holes, and the only places my kids have fished are those carnival games where you try to snag a magnetic-mouthed fish with your magnetic fishing "hook."  So "real" fishing seemed like a good idea.

My mom knew the perfect spot.  Let me digress and say that this was confirmation to me that my mom -- who grew up on Long Island and raised me in the suburbs of New York City -- has completed her decades-long metamorphosis into a rural, farm girl.  She now says stuff like "you remember the Potters who live over in the holler?" Holler??  Did she really say that??  And she knows that if you want to get a  pig, really should get two pigs, because -- as every rural person will tell you and she has therefore passed the wisdom on to me -- "they do better."  And they don't mow the grass anymore, now they "Bush Hog" things. I could go on, but I won't.   As a die-hard city/suburban girl myself, I have tried to watch this transformation with clinical detachment -- sort of how a doctor would observe a patient with a progressive flesh-eating bacteria. Just kidding, Mom. Actually, I'm impressed at how my Mom knows everyone in a three county area and knows how to dig post holes, birth foals and fence pastures.  It's really quite amazing, in a "who are you and what have you done with my real Mom?" kind of way. 

But anyway, back to fishing.  My mom knew the perfect spot because her friend owns the most perfect fishing pond ever.  The location is stunning.  Wanna see?
 

Naturally, I am an expert fisherman, fisherwoman, er fisherperson . . . whatever, from my Wonder Bread/stick pole days.  So, I'm sure that the fact that I caught a huge fish had nothing to do with the fact that there were so many fish in that pond, they were practically bumping into each other down there.  Here's my bass.

Really it was so crowded in that pond, the fish were practically flinging themselves on the dock with us, probably just seeking a little breathing room.  I almost had to use the fishing pole to beat off all the fish trying to be free.

Daniel was a little alarmed by this, and even more alarmed by the fact that we weren't fishing with sterile Wonder Bread, but instead with real live blood-and-guts worms.  And boy oh boy, do worms have a lot of blood and guts.  Here is Gary showing Daniel our unfortunate victims.

You can see that at first he was really not sure that fishing was the sport for him. Those sunnies can terrify even the bravest of boys (and so can Grandpa JJ sneaking up behind him).

But, by the end, he was reeling them in like a pro:

Julie, never one to shy away from a new adventure, was raring to go from the start.  I swear, that girl would have dived in and arm wrestled those fish to the surface, if we'd asked her to.

Fishin' with grammaw, in the crick down in the holler . . . or somethin'

Ain't it purty?

One thing you will notice is that Grandpa JJ never has a line in the water.  Honestly, I've been fishing with him my whole life, and I'm not sure that I've ever actually seen him fish.  It's not because he doesn't like fishing -- because he is a great fisherman; it's because -- despite being the tough guy that he is -- he's always the one helping everybody else fish.  For example, he replaced countless hooks that night, ones that got lost in the reeds, or some that got stuck in the pond (probably wedged between the fish).

He's also the one who has taken 99.95% of all fish I've ever caught off of the hook for me.  And my kids are now enjoying his de-hooking skills.

He's a good guy, that Grandpa JJ.  We of course threw all the fish back, though I'm pretty sure they wanted to come home with us and live in a nice roomy fishtank.  They wanted to be city fish.

So, it was the perfect evening at the perfect fishing pond.  One of those moments that make you consciously aware of how beautiful life can be.  Except for the worm guts, of course.