No It All

In mid-December the Raptors head to the Area Q tournament in Lompoc.  It’s exciting because we never expected to be here and we’re out in the world, and it’s the first tournament experience for most of our team.

The fields of Lompoc are gopher nirvana.  There are holes and mounds and beach-sized patches of sand everywhere.  Our lady ref literally falls in a hole during one game, twists her ankle, and disappears for fifteen minutes.  Til she claws her way back to the surface.

We win our first game against 5 Cities.  We win our second game against the Unripe Tomahtoes.  We win our third game against Santa Ynez.  Nate scores eight goals across three games.  Arie scores.  I think Isaac scores.  They give us wrestling-belt sized medals in purple and gold and the first place Unripe Tomahtoes feign happiness that they’re not going to Bakersfield.  The last goal Nate scores was this weird swooping shot from outside the box where the ball rolls down his leg like a ski-ball chute and then plummets down into the net from outer space.  It’s like his boots have been kissed by the Elon gopher gods.

He comes off the field and I’m like, “That was weird.”  And he’s like, “What was that?”  And then Alexis’ dad comes over and asks Nate to sign his jersey.  It was hilarious but Nate didn’t get the joke.

Nate and I arrive home and we’re walking on air.  We open the front door and see Jacob and proudly show him our medals and our pins and he says, “What?  The Raptors won the tournament?”  Nate is technically on three teams– CCU, the Raptors, and the All Stars so I can see why he might get confused.

“Yes!  The Raptors!  We won first place!”

“What?  The Raptors?  Are you sure?”

Bakersfield, here we come.

As I noted in this year’s annual card, there was a day deep in the pandemic when Nate and I were lamenting the loss of an ENTIRE All Stars season.  Serious loss aversion.  We’re in the living room and he says to me, “Mom, my dream is to play in Bakersfield.”  Which, still to this day, sounds like one of the nicest things I’ve ever heard said about Bakersfield.

And the first stop on that road was, of course, our AYSO end of season tournament.

Now I may also have mentioned that the Raptors are a semi-dedicated gaggle of lads on the football pitch.  On more than one occasion James and I wondered if our players were mostly there because their parents had had enough of lounging YouTube Zoom School zombies and signed them up for the first thing that arrived in their inbox.  We ambitiously started the season practicing things like passing to space and movement, quickly adjusting to how to kick the ball.  We worked up to kicking it hard and far and started winning some games.

At the end of the season we entered the tournament with modest ambitions.  Then two or three of the top teams were disqualified for playing their best guys too much and we leaped up the ranks.  We won our first game and then faced off against our baseball coach from past posts.

It’s a very tight game.  We’re tied at the end of the second half and go into overtime.  At this point, we give Nate full permission to just get the ball and score while Cruz holds down the back.  During the first overtime Nate gets the ball and is up against an aggressive opponent who is now one of our All Stars teammates.  He sees an opening and drives toward the goal.

On the far side of the field, our teammate Luke is playing right forward and starts running eagerly toward the goal.  He’s in an offside position, but if you know anything about Nate, it’s clear he’s definitely not going to pass.  Never crosses his mind.  He takes it down and scores in the bottom left corner, while the other sideline, and particularly the coach, are screaming their heads off.

Now the offside rule I’m sure is the topic of countless hours of debate in British pubs across the land where it was most certainly invented by drunks.  In any case, in AYSO, if the kid off side is not in the play and isn’t distracting the defense, then it doesn’t matter.  Meanwhile our linesman is a powerful and respected member of the AYSO elite volunteers corps.  Our sideline of parents starts shouting and griping about the other team’s coach’s shouting and griping.  I take one look at the linesman and tell our side to zip it.  We’re good.  I’m a bit of a hobbyist expert on the power hierarchy of Damon Garcia and Nate’s goal is going to stand.

That’s when it gets heated.  There’s long-distance yelling.  It gets personal.  The Raptors end up winning in overtime, but not before a red card and a personal escort to the parking lot for our previous coach.  It’s high drama.  Nate and I have some good life lesson car talks on the drive home.

Later that day James and Jake head down to the outdoor store to look for Banff gear and overhear someone recounting the entire story as they browse wool socks and ski pants.  Gotta love a small town.  James texts me a gif of Homer Simpson fading backwards into a hedge.

Following our win, we lose our third game to the Unripe Tomatoes (pronounced Tomahtoes) under extreme heat conditions and elatedly accept our second place medals.

Next stop: Lompoc.

My dearest Jacob,

Let’s just pretend it’s springtime off last year and I haven’t fallen victim to the pandemic blahs and watching endless hours of Survivor and… drumroll please… it’s Jacob’s birthday letter time!  I do in fact think twelve-and-three-quarters truly suits you, and I know most people have never said that about twelve-and-three-anythings.

This may seem like a bit of a cheat, but I honestly am not sure any member of your family has ever written you this nice of a letter, including me.  And Zach isn’t even a member of your family.  So here is a glimpse into twelve-year-old Jacob from the perspective of a slightly older camp counselor guy.  We know those camp counselor guys don’t mince words.  And we know it’s not a form letter as demonstrated by the much shorter and unmemorable letter Nate received addressed to “Max.”

I love you my Hacobs.  I’m so happy to see you growing into the best version of yourself.

Love,
Mom

Back on January 11, 2016, I started this blog and then saved it in my drafts folder.  I was actively trying to land a new job and certainly didn’t want to stall my chances via one Google search linking my name and the word Barforama…

So here we are, having landed that job, and gagging up a little Throw-up Throwback:

Ahhh, Christmas Vacation.  We all look forward to the break as a relaxing and fun-filled time full of carols and cookies and sleeping-in.  Each year I try to capture all of the memories we pack into these two short weeks, though somehow I generally forget how exhausted we are after days and days of criss-crossing California and coming-up with cabin-fever eradicating activities to partake in during days of torrential downpours and the deeply unsettling feeling of “going to the snow” and seeing no snow.

On that note, our annual holiday tradition is to rent a house in Yosemite to enjoy one of the most beautiful snow-filled winter wonderlands around.  But due to the drought, the last two years have involved packing-up the car and attempting to enjoy our usually crowd-free national wonder with buses of tourists given how sunny and easy it is to drive a giant luxury tour bus on snow-free roads.  Last year we got a little bit of tubing in with the Hampton family, but we were all stripped down to t-shirts it was so hot.

So I declared enough!  We are not going next year.  And then it dumped inches and inches and that little twerpy niño just yucked it up.  The thing is, we probably couldn’t have gone anyway.

The first official day of the break, Jacob woke up in the middle of the night, leaned over the side of the top bunk, and barfed.  Everywhere.  Fortunately he came and told his dad.  Key detail.  But then James woke up the whole house with his disgusted mouth breathing as he scrubs and gags his way through the enormous blast zone.  Nate was lucky to have been spared in the bottom bunk.  A few days later, the same kid wakes-up with a nose bleed and again, proceeds to rain icky bodily fluids down from the top bunk onto everything.

Epic Christmas Vacation.

And now it’s five years later and clearly we’re due for a sick story.  At some point we started asking ourselves, has Nate ever thrown up?  We got nothin’.  Though Nate’s an unreliable source.  We’re still not sure he isn’t faking his experience of dreams.  But after a lot of research we confirmed he’d never thrown-up.  Apparently the kid has a strange tolerance for pain and a stomach of steel.

On Sunday the Raptors played two championship games and walked away with a second place medal and a dramatic soccer story for a separate, dramatic blog.  After two games in 95 degree heat, we celebrated at Meadow Park where Nate ingested a piece of pizza, a chocolate cupcake, two bags of Doritos, and some Takis.

Monday morning Nate was gripped with a 24-hour stomach bug, breaking his ten-year no barf record.  Taki barforama.  Enough said.

On my birthday I woke-up early of my own accord.  Kind of normal but usually I gauge the time based on how many rooster wake-up calls I’ve endured.  Where was the cock-a-doodle-doing?  Must be a special bout of birthday luck.  I didn’t give it much thought and enjoyed my first cup of birthday coffee in the dark, quiet fowl-free morning.

Before heading to school, Nate goes outside for his daily chicken chores.  He comes hurrying back to the house and announces with concern, “All the chickens are out of the coop.”

James and Nate head back out to survey the situation.

Now this is probably a good time in the story to take a bit of a detour.  Remember the time Nate was convinced wobbers and bad guys might come and steal his plastic dragon?  Or the time he was convinced a bird had swooped down and stolen Jacob’s goggles after he’d flung them into the sky?  Well, I’m pleased to say he’s at it again.

So back at the coop…  all the hens are herded back into the sorority through the suspiciously unlatched door.  The girls are unscathed except Spaz.  She’s lost half her feathers.  She’s still spastic because she’s either cheated death, or that’s why we call her Spaz.

Salty is nowhere to be found.  Officially gone.  The second half of the rooster ploblem, solved.

How exactly did the coop door end up open and all the girls’ lives jeopardized, ending in the demise of our rooster problem?

Nate puts forth, “Do you think a raccoon and a fox teamed-up?  I think they probably teamed-up and opened the door.”

Well I guess it’s possible…  Do you think the raccoon, or the fox, goes by Nate?

As I think I’ve mentioned, after school car rides are the best time to get all the hot goss.  I especially hear a lot of stories on Mondays and Wednesdays, when I’m in charge of getting Nate and Cruz to Mustangs practice.

Last week Nate casually mentions they “kind of had a lockdown” at school today.  That freaks me out so I nonchalantly pry.  So uh… what happened?

And he proceeds to tell me about a series of announcements over the intercom.  And his teacher being told to lock the classroom doors, but they don’t have to hide.  It seems someone named Juan Carlos was missing.  Nate doesn’t know Juan Carlos but believes he’s a second grader.  He doesn’t get if Carlos is his last name or his middle name or what exactly took place, but at some point it was declared safe and they were let out for snack time.  And there was a police car at school.

The next day I get the JC update.  Turns out some teacher thought Juan Carlos had gone to the bathroom and never came back. But… actually the kid was never even at school that day.  Holy major professional mistake being blabbed all about the playground.  As Jake would say, “She done goofed.”

Cruz then adds that a bleeding goose was found in the library.  Some first graders told Mrs. Clark there was a hurt duck in the building.

“Wait, was it a duck or a goose?”  It was a goose.  First graders are just confused.  And it was injured and bleeding everywhere and went into the library.

“All of this happened yesterday?  The same day Juan Carlos was missing?”

“Yeah, the day it rained.”

I’m not sure what’s harder to believe… the Juan Carlos story, the goose story, or that it rained?

Probably that it rained.

This past Saturday, Jake mentioned something called the Scare Farm happening that night.  I heard eighth graders and Halloween and I gathered it was going to be like a haunted house, but on a farm… how very San Luis Obispo.  Our neighbor, Mckinley, was in town and she oriented me to the existence of a previous Junior High School that’s now an “Adult School” and is back up behind French Hospital– a landmark frequently quoted and completely out of my territory.

James had to pack for Sedona, so the boys and I set out in our warm jackets with a 20 dollar bill and our Covid masks.  We showed-up exactly at the designated opening time and after asking some grown-ups to point us toward the farm, we found a line reminiscent of the Cars ride at Disney’s California Adventure.  Hundreds of teenagers crowded down the hill in the dark for miles.

The boys were instantly ready to call it quits, but I used my powerful powers of persuasion to get them to tough it out.

After forty five minutes of horror, we finally made it to the entrance of the Scare Farm.

It was great.  Imagine some kind of 4-H animal stalls and chutes and paths transformed into rooms of screaming teenagers with strobe lights and black lipstick.  There was a restaurant and zombies and clowns and maybe a casino.  Their choice of spaghetti noodles was whack, but otherwise I knew it was pretty good when Nate grabbed my hand over halfway through.  I guess I should have been paying attention to how he was doing, but I was too busy laughing and screaming and dodging crazy teenage actors yelling in my face.  Glad I brought that Covid mask.

When all was said and done, the boys thought it was pretty good and Jacob came up with all the ways he’s going to make it better next year when he’s an eighth grader.  (gasp I can’t believe I wrote those last words…)

During the wait, middle school girls cut in and out of the line in droves, talking at 10x the necessary volume, flipping their hair with cell phones three inches from their faces.  There were two physical altercations that literally almost turned into fights.  Shoving and chasing.  Tears and drama and insane amounts of mother-bleeping b-words.  Oh my god, I like bleeping posted this picture and then he like, followed it, and so I followed him back and then he was like stalking my post and like, what the bleep… give it back!  What the bleep??

At one point I successfully convinced the boys to follow me as I cut in front of the huge tornado of cussing tee-hee girls.  Someone tried to confront us, but we just stared silently from behind our masks under the cover of night.  On Sunday, we had a solid car lesson on how to recognize and avoid tee-hee girls.  For a full definition, please consult your Uncle Geoff.

The scariest part of the Scare Farm?  Hands down waiting in line for 45 minutes surrounded by middle school girls.  Mother bleeping h-e-double-hockey-sticks.

This morning we took a drive to the Elfin Forest for a morning boardwalk walk and some Thai food.  The boys are in the backseat and my potential future birthday present comes up as a topic of conversation.  Nate usually goes straight to the purse theory.  Always a solid supposition.  But this morning he starts with jewelry as that was quite a hit over Christmas.  Unfortunately, I’m the type of girl who takes out her earrings every time the winter Olympics rolls around so… we’re looking for some fresh ideas.

I give it a few minutes and ultimately, I really only need some wool base layers for our holiday trip to Banff.  But I’m not loving the idea of long johns no matter how luxurious, so I throw out that I want new clogs.

And Nate responds, “You want a new toilet plunger?”

For the record: Uh… no.

During the last few days of August, I traveled to San Diego for my first-ever work conference COVID-style.  It was energizing, productive, and my vaccine held up.  I’m not quite sure how it came up, but at some point I mentioned Rooster Creek.

What exactly is Rooster Creek you might ask?  It seems to be a colloquial name for this little strip of park in the small village of Arroyo Grande just south of us.  Oh wait, now it’s coming back to me…

I was lamenting my rooster problem.  Or the “rooster ploblem” as we like to say a’la Nate 2013.  As I’d suspected, the two little Sandos were not in fact just curious hens but big, bad, voodoo daddies.  I really don’t know why I ever doubted myself.  I know little boys when I see them.  And when they repeatedly wake me up in the wee hours.

So I’m in San Diego and I’m lamenting the fact that we now have two fartin’ roosters, not just one.  James already attempted to return the roosters to Tractor Supply as they falsely sold us pullets.  When they wouldn’t take them, he chose not to conveniently drop them off in the back of the store.  I guess maybe they have security cameras…
So we figure our options are:

1. Hire Neighbor James to solve my problem… again
2. Surreptitiously take them to Rooster Creek, or
3. Create my own new Rooster Creek down at the bottom of the mountain

My teammate Kate hears me talking about Rooster Creek and she envisions gentlemen farmers from miles around sacking their unwanted roosters in burlap bags and dropping them from above into a rushing creek.  Oh sweet, sweet Kate.  Kate is from New York City and apparently has no idea that California creeks are dry.

In fact, Rooster Creek is a darling little park along the side of an overgrown dry creek bed.  Roosters are clearly left in the dead of night, despite the threateningly-worded deterrent signage, to live out a beautiful well-fed life amidst farmers’ markets and joyful chicken-chasing children.

As much as I like fantasizing about what I’ll wear, what I’ll say to the authorities if I’m caught, and how I’ll inconspicuously lose two roosters in a dark park eleven miles from my home, we come up with option 4. Kick the boys out of the coop.  Get a move on Salty and Peppah.  So the twins begin strutting around our property like they own the place.  Every day they climb the stairs to the second floor of the barn, make a grand entrance as a Zoom background, and glare at me while they peck the window.  After I’m sufficiently intimidated, they take the stairs back down to find their next victim.

This goes on for a few weeks.  Nate and James succumb to various bouts of empathy and bullying and let them back into the coop to terrorize the hens and each other before booting them back out again.  On Wednesday night, we had a huge wind storm and the twins were out on their own.  I woke-up in the 5:00 hour Thursday morning and at some point I hear a few seconds of buck-bucking near the back deck.  Then… silence.

I had to be at work for a 7:00AM Zoom and didn’t have a chance to check on the rooster bullies.

Later that evening, James tells me how Salty came running into the coop like a bat outta hell, panting from his sunrise brush with death.  The human boys seem somewhat relieved and have spun a story that Pepper’s become breakfast for a little den of baby foxes.  Who doesn’t love baby foxes?  RIP in the chat, Pepper.

The Rooster Ploblem is now half solved.