Wrapping Up

It's that time of year again when all things are coming to an end. Tomorrow is Fred's last day of toddler class, and Maggie is finished in a week. (Side note: Sam and Lucy have to go until June 13th and they are PISSED about this.) Hockey is finished except for tryouts on Sunday morning, and music class and ice skating classes are coming to an end as well.

Maggie will mostly miss the playground and her music teacher

Lucy passed her level 2 ice skating test and declared herself ready for the olympics

Throughout the courses of these lessons and classes I have met some very nice people, and I was thinking about how to continue seeing them occasionally with them without being too weird. Because I only know them as Emily's Mom or Thalia's Mom, but they seem cool, so I want to try and maintain some sort of connection, but not come on too strong, you know? Mom dating. Luckily I have experience with these sorts of things! Some of my very best friendships were the direct result of stalking other moms who seemed fun. I gave out my number three times in the past few days, and scheduled one playground playdate, so hopefully by the fall I will have widened my circle a little more! 

Kids Who Play Hockey Have Parents Who Play Hockey

When I was a kid I was at the ice rink several days a week. My mom worked there, so we went along with her most of the time. I skated each weekend, sometimes at multiple sessions. I met one of my very best friends there when I was 11, and we still keep in touch today. Once I went to college, though, I hung up my skates. Not intentionally, but just because other things got in the way. I don't even think I took skates with me when I moved to Philly. The first time I skated after that was on Sam's third birthday, and it was shaky. Once we moved to Morgantown, I began skating more often with Lucy at her 'hockey' practice and now I'm skating several times a week with Sam's team. Add in the occasional public session with the kids, and I'm feeling pretty good about my skating ability.

My hockey ability? Now that's another story. When I'm at practice with Sam and we have to demonstrate something, I usually hang back. The other coaches on our team (we have SIX) all played or currently play hockey, so I've never been confident enough to step up. I mean, I think I can do most of the maneuvers we do in practice, but do I really want to try them out for the first time in front of a bunch of kids who think I know what I'm doing? Nope. No thanks! Not today.

What to do, then? Luckily, the answer was revealed to me in an email from our local rec center. A women's hockey clinic, for all skill levels, running for eight weeks. I ran out, bought myself a purple practice jersey (of course) and didn't sleep for days, I was so anxious. I got there extra early on my first day (of course) and began suiting up. I had put on all of my equipment the night before just to try it out. I've been dressing Sam for three years, but never myself! It was a little weird moving around in all of those pads, but I managed to get my skates on and get onto the ice without any major pratfalls.

After a few laps, I was feeling good! It was definitely weird skating with all of this stuff on, but I was glad to have it when I did a major belly flop during our scrimmage. We did some skating drills and some stick work, which was what I was the most anxious about. I yap at Sam that he should always volunteer to go first during drills, and since I didn't want to be a hypocrite, I got right in line behind the coach when he started working with pucks. And I lost that damn puck every time I had to make a turn, with all of the other ladies watching. But by then I was having so much fun I didn't care!

The next week I recruited a friend to come, too, so it was even more fun! I skated my butt off, and I felt it later on, but after only a few weeks I'm feeling a lot more comfortable playing hockey. So next week I'm joining the actual league that plays actual games. Crazy, I know, but I think I kind of love it!

--

Speaking of hockey games, our team came in second place in our last tournament, and Sam got his very first trophy. He was so, so excited! Go Hornets!

Dear West Virginia: F*ck You

A few months ago we decided to sell our house and move out of West Virginia, as you may recall. We put our house on the market for a fairly reasonable price, considering the local economy, and had lots of interest. I was, of course, losing my mind trying to keep things neat and tidy all day every day, plus vacating my ultra-tidy house with all four kids whenever the realtors came a-calling. But it was going well, this house selling process.

Or so it seemed.

Most of the "interested parties" we had were very concerned with the exterior surface of our house, which is a synthetic stucco. So to calm all of the fears, we had it inspected. And there were some issues. Still, we hadn't scared off everyone, so we set about finding a contractor to makes the necessary repairs.

We had three companies give us quotes, one local and two from the Pittsburgh area. The work is pretty specialized, so there aren't an abundance of companies who even do this kind of thing. The guys from PA were specialy trained and certified to work with this specific material, but the guy from WV wasn't. The bid from the WV guy was the lowest in price, but we had heard from several people we trust that he was likely to jack up that number once the work was started and we were at his mercy. Plus, by now we were only down to one "interested party" and they were from the Pittsburgh area, and more comfortable with the work being done by someone who was bonafied. AND! Not to toot our own horn, but generally speaking we are pretty decent folks who would feel badly about getting a cut-rate guy to do this work just because we're trying to sell the joint.

Long story long, we went with one of the Pittsburgh companies. Two weeks into a six week job, when a good portion of our house was torn apart, someone made an anonymous call to the WV division of labor about our contractor. He's a stand up guy, but some of his documentation required by this state had expired, so he was served with cease-and-desist papers by the state of West Virginia.

No one really knows who made that call, but I've seen WV contractor's truck in our neighborhood once or twice in the past few weeks, and I can't really imagine that any of our neighbors would do that to us. So now our contractor has one week to weather-proof our house and then his crew has to stop working until he gets all of his affairs in order. SOB has tried to make some calls to some of our local government guys, just to see how long things might take and if there's any way we can help facilitate the process. You know, since we're living in a house that has half of the windows and doors sealed shut temporarily, but he was basically told to go screw. In fact, one guy told him that we were probably going to be scrutinized even more for making the calls.

And why is all of this happening? Because we are not from West Virginia, and we opted to use a contractor who also isn't from West Virginia. Just like everything else here, from housework to hospitals, it doesn't matter how well you do your job, what matters is where you were born and where you went to college. And who does this hurt? The people of West Virginia.

Which is why I'm counting the days until we are no longer among their numbers.

Reunited, and It Feels So Good

On Monday night I had a dinner with someone I hadn't seen or spoken to properly in almost twelve years. And it was pretty awesome!

I spend a great deal (read: way too much) time online. I blog here. I blog there. I also blog over there. I read 749 other blogs. I tweet. I read random fashion and TV sites. I occasionally try and keep up with the news, too. And now I'm even getting Sam into playing online, so I usually spend some time at Sprout.com most days. So I resisted with great fervor the bevy of social networking sites laid before me in recent years. I knew they would just be a non-essential time suck. 

Then my dad signed up on the Facebook, and I was cornered. I got an invite from him, and I can't say no to my daddy. If you ever want something from me and don't know how to get it, just have my dad ask for you. I'm helpless against him. So I joined up. 

At first, the only 'friends' I had were relatives. I'm the oldest of my generation, so I started following all of my hip teenage cousins. But after my brother signed up, I started discovering some old high school people. Some I barely knew, but others I had been close with. I lost touch with pretty much everyone from high school right after I started college because I was hell bent on re-inventing myself. I moved 300 miles away and pretended that the place where I came from never existed for a few years. Luckily, I made some pretty awesome friends in college, but because I was a dumb ass I left behind a few pretty awesome friends from high school.

Enter the Facebook. Through my bro I was friended by M, one of my best high school buddies. We chatted back and forth about life in the past decade and did the general catching up thing. Then she said she was going to be in town for work and would love to get together. Right off the bat I agreed, and while I was excited I was also extremely nervous. 

First of all, I am pregnant, and besides that somewhat, um, larger than I'd like to be. Especially compared to high school. I mean, at least I have the whole pregnancy thing going as an excuse, but still? Large and in charge. Secondly, I am boring! One of the very first messages she sent me contained the word 'legendary' and I can assure you, there is NOTHING legendary about my life right now unless you count the number of asses I wipe on a daily basis. Because I do, in fact, wipe a lot of butts. But everything else? Meh. I drive a fucking mini-van. Going to the Y and grocery store are big outings for me and the kiddies. I love it and wouldn't trade it for the world, but it doesn't make for very interesting dinner conversation. 

As the days ticked down to our date, I began to fret over what I was going to wear and what restaurant we should go to. I flat ironed my hair, people. I've been with SOB forever, but I can only imagine that this is what dating must be like. 

Finally the day arrived. 

I went out to pick Lulu up from school, and when I got back she was there, looking as youthful and radiant as she did in 1997. After an embrace and an admonishment from Sam to talk quietly, as he was watching TV, we moved into the dining room and started talking. The conversation flowed as easily as it did all those years ago, and even though it was cliche, I got out a box of photos and we poured over the old images. Sometimes we couldn't remember what or when or where, but we laughed all the same. Dinner was more of the same. Our meal was eaten at a snail's pace because we just couldn't stop talking. New stuff, old stuff and everything in between. Stories of people who have ended up in prison (mostly) made us laugh and stories of people who have died made us pause, sometimes to keep the tears from spilling, other times just to take it in. 

Once we said our goodbyes, and made plans for another get together in the near future, I spent almost an hour giddily recounting every minute to SOB. He knew better than to stop me, so he switched on his video game and listened with half an ear as I prattled on and on, quite literally like a school girl. 

Me & M.C. 1996

Trains and Dinosaurs and Butterflies, Oh My!

From the 'things I want to do with the kids before baby #3 comes along and mucks everything up' file, I decided to take Sam to the Museum of Natural Sciences today to see some dinosaur bones. We had a few scheduling changes this week which put Lucy at school today instead of tomorrow, meaning Sam and I had the world at our fingertips! We called Aunt Yani and headed out on our adventure. 

I decided that since the weather was nice, we would take the train into town. The museum is only a few blocks from the station, so I grabbed the small stroller in case someone didn't want to walk Allison. Naturally, the train was Sam's favorite part. He clutched the ticket receipt from the conductor to his face. He even liked it better than 'the TV that lets dinosaurs eat you' as he called it. 

Ah green screen technology. What can't you do?

We saw lots of bones and lots of other dino-related items. And that was just the first floor! We also saw lots of fake, stuffed, real-ish looking animals like tigers and yaks. And some actually real animals like bunnies and turtles, and Butterflies! Oh the Butterflies!

Can you guess which part was mommy's favorite? 

Then another short walk and we were back at the train station, where I peed in an underground train station bathroom. Check that off of the list of things to do before I die. 

(Also check off bathe in iodine. Because that's what I did once I got home.)

On the return ride, we were on a new train where the seats can be reversed so that two rows face each other. I guess this is for groups traveling together, or for people who detest riding backwards. Sam just about popped a sprocket when the conductor showed him this trick and made it so that he was facing me instead of having me sitting behind him. He's been up in his room for almost two hours now, not sleeping, talking to himself about this amazing train feature. When I asked him his favorite part about the dinosaur museum, he said 'the train and the seat that goes backwards.' 

Boy am I glad I shelled out $34 bucks for the bones. At least I got to see pretty butterflies!