wild*life

We’ve been on the Book Elf’s route for just over five years.  He generally sneaks in, under the cover of night, leaving a new book in the flannel book bag on each December Friday leading up to Christmas.

I must say, last year his existence was questioned mightily.  Jacob set-up his usual notes to the Book Elf and laid traps and accused me of being the Book Elf one morning when the little guy came late and somehow planted his book while Jake was eating cereal and I was in the shower.  Curious how his lack of urgency becomes my emergency.

This year Nate began questioning his faith.  A few weeks back, we were crossing the street at Higuera and Broad and Nate turns to me accusingly, his finger pointed at my chest.  He declares, “And there’s no such thing as miniature people!”  I’m sure many a parishioner has been lost to hanger.

That afternoon, a living room showing of the new Netflix classic, The Christmas Chronicles, firmly bought the Book Elf another year’s paycheck.  I’m convinced it was the rainbow chimney teleporting that sealed the deal.  It just makes sense that the big man doesn’t re-park the sleigh on every roof in the neighborhood, am I right?

This year the Book Elf brought the Guinness Book of World Records 2019, the My Side of the Mountain Trilogy, and a bonus combo of the Wings of Fire Book 10 and Plants vs. Zombies Volume 11: War and Peas.  Jake was so desperate for the next Wings of Fire Book that he was yelling out his needs into the air, hoping the Book Elf would hear him and come to his aid.

On the night of Thursday December 20th, the Book Elf had gone out to dinner with his in-laws, had one cocktail, and then made a brief stop at a small work gathering downtown.  It was the holidays so, of course, he was running around town, trying to do it all.  He made a quick stop at the bookstore to pick-up his nightly rounds and then headed off for the late shift.  His job was easy, as the two little boys at the top of Squire Canyon were fast asleep when he made his stop.  He finished his work and headed off to bed.

The next morning he woke early with a start.  Where was the receipt from Barnes and Noble?  The one with the ill-conceived shopping experience where they give you a coupon for the café upstairs, every time you’re leaving the premises downstairs?  The Book Elf quickly threw on his curly-toed shoes and beelined it back to Squire Canyon, finding three receipts tucked perfectly into the front of Wings of Fire Book 10.  He stuffed them in the recycling and made himself a coffee for the road.

It was a near 7AM massacre of the Book Elf and his entire magical crew– Santa, the Easter Bunny, leprechauns, the Tooth Fairy, and the Pajama Elf all breathed a deep, collective sigh of relief.

And live to gift another day.

We’ve got a number of family mottos ’round these parts.  Go Big or Go Home.  We bite Food, not Friends.  Sunglasses: On your Face or in the Case.  And of course our mother of all mottos: Brothers Stick Together.

Another one goes something like: We’ve Never had a Good Donut Day.

I’ve said this so much so that our sugar-sensitive, King of Hanger is actually a teeny bit scared of eating ’em.  Like a kid with severe allergies, he’s wary of donuts.  I feel a wee bit bad about this, and then I remember the time when Jacob was four or so and he had such a donut-induced meltdown on the side of a soccer field that two-year-old Nate is sobbing that we’re going to leave Jacob on the side of the road in San Jose.  And we seriously might.  Score one for Brothers Stick Together.

So the end of our Christmas vacation this year took place in Carlsbad– home of the infamous Legoland and the San Diego Safari Park.  On our last morning, on our walk back to the hotel from breakfast, we pass a super cute, hipster donut shop called The Goods.  There’s this lady sitting at the window counter by herself.  She locks eyes with James as she’s eating her donut with two-hands.  Even through the glass and the glare and the gold-leaf window logos, her eyes scream, “Get in here!”  She stops us in our donut avoidance tracks.

The case of confections is beautiful.  Stunning really.  I’ve never seen prettier donuts, not even in Portland.  And they have a lot of pretty donuts.

So we go with Go Big or Go Home and try to laugh off We’ve Never had a Good Donut Day.  We leave with two beautiful donuts, one gluten-imprisoned and one gluten-free.  Both with a glistening layer of chocolate glaze.

Then we get back in the car and continue our drive north.  At some point, Nate and Jake confess to having figured-out how to change the passwords on their iPads.  They giggle in that conspiratorial way that dates all the way back to the origin story of the bum-bum.  There’s something about thinking you’ve outsmarted Mama that brings out the belly laughs.

An hour or so after lunch at the SBPM (our serious fave) and half a donut each, we’re back in the Budget Rent-An-Explorer.  My half was seriously the best donut I’ve ever had.

I sense some concern emanating from the backseat.  The password changing has gone off the rails.  Nate’s locked out of his iPad.  He’s tried all the things he may have changed it to.  It’s now disabled.  Daddy, without sympathy, breaks the news that the only way back in is to wipe the thing clean.  All your stuff is lost.  Gone.  Ay-dios.  The perils of iPad password hanky-panky.

Jacob is now crying.  Another point for Brothers Stick Together.  He’s crying and beating himself up because he never should have taught Nate how to change the password.  It’s all his fault.  He implores Nate to remember the password.  Nate’s got nothin’.  This is definitely the donut talking.  Or crying, if you will.  This is what donuts do to us.  Donuts Make us Go Nuts.  Hmmmm, I seem to be the source of all these slogans.

And so the Fucillo Family wisdom stands: We’ve Never had a Good Donut Day.

But dang, that day I had a good donut.

Yesterday we enjoyed a quick visit from the Scotts Valley Purnells.  It consisted of their usual Firestone fix, some denim shopping, and an adventurous creek walk.  Watching newly minted 4-year-old Bry Bry brave the concrete wall “steps,” above the creek that actually has water in it, was a bit of a nail-biter.  Jakey taught him how to dab.

Afterward we went back to the shop before they got back on the road.  In his usual fashion, Jacob crept over to the big blue tin of Danish butter cookies someone had given James.  I take the tin and kneel down so Bryan can get a good look at what’s inside.  I name off everything that’s left and try to explain that they all taste the same.  He’s overwhelmed by the decision– he grabs his head with two hands and walks away.  “I just can’t decide.”  I coax him back as I’ve got very little patience for indecision.  We’re talking cookies here– not peace in the Middle East.

He comes back and I name his choices: pretzel-shaped, dog-poop-shaped, or round.  That’s all that’s left.

A moment of consideration.

He attempts to make off with an entire paper sleeve of “dog-poop” cookies.

Seriously, I could sell ice to Eskimos.

I love being a soccer mom.  Love it.

I’m not a baseball mom.  At all.  Even without the nacho cheese, it’s just not my gig.  We’re about to start basketball.  I don’t really know what basketball moms are like.  I know quite a bit about basketball dads, but that’s a story for basketball season.  I was born to be a soccer mom.

Sadly, our soccer season came to an end two Saturday’s ago.  Nate’s season ended the weekend before.  The Awesome Panthers, under the tutelage of Coach Sarah, had gone undefeated until their last game.  I’ll never forget the time Reese got the ball, made a move, took in all the sideline coaching being yelled at him, turned to us, gave a perfect thumbs-up, smiled, his eye sparkled, and then kicked it back into the fray.  Oh that Reese.

Nate may have been the best player in Boys U8, though he met some stiff competition in the twin soccer sensations of our Y camp associates Merick and Herick.  All in all, Nate had a terrific season and really basked in all the glory.  It’s tough to bask in anything but inferiority when constantly faced with an older, bigger brother.  The combo of Nate’s obsessive practicing plus World Cup infatuation plus the ability to google trick shots on YouTube resulted in an average of two hat tricks every week.  It was good for him.

Meanwhile, the Gray Ghosts had a tough season.  Coach Woodsie had his unfair share of newbies in Boys U10.  But the Ghosts were finally firing on all cylinders as we entered the end of season tourney.  Friday night we had our first game under the lights at Damon Garcia.  We’re down 2 to 1.  Time is running out.  Jacob’s on the field.  He’s our first string goalie and hasn’t been on the pitch much.  Rudy crosses the ball in front of the goal.  Jake’s there.  He kicks it diagonally.  And… it’s in!  He grabs his head with two hands in total disbelief.  His teammates run up and hug him.  Infectious grins all around.  Jake just keeps grabbing his head with two hands as he runs in a big circle.  Whistle blows and it’s over.

Less than twelve hours later, we’re back on the same field.  It’s 50 degrees warmer and we’re up against the Corcoran brothers– Jackson and Cruz.  Two of our faves.  The odds are not in our favor.  We’re told we have to win 3-0 to get a shot at advancement.  We haven’t won anything 3-0 except maybe in Theo Takedowns (Theo was a kid on our team… long story) or Gatorade glugging.

We play the game of our lives.  We score three goals.  We shut them out.  It’s crazy exciting.  I’m totally the loudest soccer mom.  It’s one of the best tournament games the fields of Damon Garcia have ever known.

Unfortunately we needed some other team on a different field to lose in order for us to advance.  That team with the forward and the goalie that are taller than me and weigh at least three Seans (another kid on our team– head and shoulders our most improved player).  Our season is over.  We played our best.  Left it all on the field.  A grand celebration of cupcakes, guess-the-player coach speeches, and Sinsheimer cardboard turf surfing were the perfect end to a climactic season.

That Friday night we’d met as a family at the Marigold Starbucks for a pre-game snack of prepackaged salami and cheese.  I showed-up first and opened the rear hatch of the Rat Mobile.  The tailgate opens part way, spits out a soccer ball, and closes.  Not once, but twice.  I kid you not.

I died laughing.  I’m such a soccer mom.

There’s this thing on the internet they call “Mom Hacks.”  The name conjures homemade solutions to small inconveniences like California’s plastic straw ban— a mental image of kids sipping milk through empty toilet paper rolls.  I’m probably totally wrong on that front.  A quick search shows I should have said sipping milk through swimming pool noodles.

In any case, I’ve invented my very own mom hack and it’s genius, if I do say so myself, and I do because this is my blog where I get to say everything myself.

So here it goes…  you know how every $80 box of Legos comes with a little mini magazine booklet of instructions plus ads for how to spend another $80?  These little booklets are always strewn about– collecting dust on shelves, stacked in piles, shoved under furniture.  But without them, little minds fret, “How will I ever build this General Magmar’s Siege Machine of Doom again?”  And little moms fret, “How will I ever remember which Legos we already have so that Santa and his elves won’t unwittingly spend a small fortune on another General Magmar’s Siege Machine of Doom?”

The answer?  Pinterest.  Yes, the app for irresistible house porn is also the perfect Mom Lego hack app.  Let me explain.

Lego, in their infinite wisdom of premium-priced educational toy sales, has created a searchable database online where one can access an electronic version of the instructions.  It’s Lego Google.  Legoogle if you will.  So for example, if one’s husband were to, let’s just say, hypothetically buy their wife the $100 Harry Potter Great Hall Lego set for her birthday, then that theoretical Mom, after enjoying her two hours of free time while her fictitious children build her new present, would follow these steps:

1. Google “Lego Harry Potter Great Hall instructions”.
2. Hit the web browser Pinterest icon.
3. Select the picture of the instruction booklet that matches the one her pretend kids have already lost in the couch cushions.
4. And voila!  She now has a personal cheat sheet in her pocket the next time she’s at the Grown-ups Only Whiz Kids 20% Thursday Night Holiday Sale.
5. Bonus tip: She can also keep a running tally of the small fortune her family has amassed in Legos… 39 (and counting).

After that fictional birthday I might have mentioned, James texted me the following screen shot from Twitter.

Let’s just say… I might have shot milk out of my pool noodles.

Back in our old neighborhood, we were known as “The Leg Lamp” house.  For years after we moved, Plat and Clarence would post to our Facebook pages “We miss you Leg Lamp!”

We earned this rep because at Christmas time we’d proudly display our fishnetted Christmas Story lamp front and center in our big picture window facing the street.  We’d giggle and wave as passing pedestrians would stop and take pictures or at the brake lights as cars slowed down for a long, appreciative look.

That said, there are many, many people out in the world who have somehow missed this decades-old movie.  They haven’t stumbled across the repeating, 24-hour movie marathon where it plays over and over on TBS since 1997.  During Prep & Landing, a fantastic 30-minute animated movie about elves, these people don’t notice the 10-second flash of Ralphie standing in the line for Santa as a weird kid wearing aviator goggles invades his personal space.  They hear people say things like “You’ll shoot your eye out” and it just goes right over their heads.  They never yell things like “Bumpuses!” And they don’t laugh appreciatively when someone’s opening a box and declares in fra-gee-lay.

Along these lines, we’ve endured several holiday guest visitors and an awkward exchange that goes something like this…

Andrea: Entering our house for the first time and being greeted by a table with the lamp proudly displayed front and center.  “Wow, I like your lamp.”

Me: “Yeah, thanks.  It’s our favorite holiday decoration.”

Andrea: “Mmmmm.” I detect more to this awkward pause.

Me: “You know this lamp from the movie, right?”

Andrea: “Which movie?”  Followed by a fluttering, nervous laugh.

A warm wave of shame washes through me a little.  Like, uh, what kind of taste and style do you think I have?  An aesthetic that displays bawdy tasseled high-heeled lamps as an unexpected shot of living room design whimsy?

One evening this week I go looking for my iPad for a little evening reading.  I find it in its pleasing red cover, open the front and find myself transported straight into the Christmas Story movie:

My mother, grabbing for her copy of Look magazine... 

would find herself cleverly trapped into reading a Red Ryder sales pitch. 

But instead of an ad for a bebe gun, I find a three-part persuasive letter on why Jacob should be allowed to have the video game Fortnite.  The front is labeled “To: Mom”.

I don’t think this movie is going to end as well as it did for Ralphie…

Two Saturdays ago, Jacob’s Halloween Party fantasies finally came true.  Although given I’m the one that went to two grocery stores plus Target, wait make that three grocery stores, plus Target… and hauled the ice, set-up the taco buffet, lit the charcoal grill, hung the spiderwebs and remembered the trash cans, I’m willing to share the credit 90/10.  Jake did help with staircase Danger tape and outdoor spider web hanging with his dad.

The party was a hit.  Atticus arrived as an unbelievably threatening robot made of trash can parts and a bucket head.  Lightning’s never been so scared.  We invited a mix of our next door neighbors and some of the boys’ best school buddies. A bit of Bean Boozled and some competitive chess matches.  Princess Leia exclaiming all the food words she knows now: burgers, cheese, apple, broki, cake!  We had a dress-up picture station that was a real hoot.  I honestly can’t erase the creepy mental image of Nate in a huge witch nose with my red Pulp Fiction wig.  We had helium balloon fighting and an unsanctioned water gun battle where I found kids gleefully running around the yard completely soaked, using metal trash can lids as shields.  Of course Jacob is reigning over this war having given out his squirt guns and then claiming the hose with a jet nozzle for himself.  Fortunately Lycra Halloween costumes dry quickly.  I felt like a successful homemaker as I came out of the house with a perfectly folded fluffy pile of beach towels for the knight, Fortnite characters and Cristiano Ronaldo.

The kiddos loved the bobbing for apples station.  I was smugly satisfied to see them not only bob for two entire bags of apples, but actually eat them.  I then felt less bad when I set-up the cupcake decorating activity.

I’d gone to Michael’s, which I’m loathe to do, and found a pretty decent buffet of cake decorating choices.  I got some sugar skeleton heads, gravestones, sprinkles and miniature bloody hatchets.  You know me, I’m a real sucker for anything miniature.  There was this great pic on the package showing a white frosted cupcake, covered in oozing red icing, with the bloody hatchet on top, angled just so.  Darling, right?  I had to pass on the severed sugar fingers… maybe next year.

So the kids are crowded around unsupervised as they return to the station hopped-up on sugar and ready to do it all again.  I pause the group— wait, did you ask your mom and dad if you’re allowed to have two?  The parents throw caution to the wind and gleefully grant their permission, “It’s Halloween!  Sugar ‘em up!  Why not?!”  How many beers have these people drunk?  Clearly I’m not the fun mom… well at least not for Ronaldo and the Omega.

Cruz comes up to me, opens his mouth and it’s filled with a chocolatey black mess of bloody cupcake.  I see a whole miniature hatchet wedged in there from cheek-to-cheek and I panic a little bit that someone’s going to choke on marginally edible cupcake weapons.

His dad’s just like, “Whatever keeps him quiet.”

We used to call my car Lufthansa.  That was back when it was James’ car and it hadn’t driven tens of thousands of miles carrying tens of thousands of house hunters.  It had the luxury car acceleration.  And silence.  And smell.  Then we traded in my previous vehicle, the Crop Duster, and I inherited Lufthansa.  That’s when her dashboard started to crack, myriad warning lights began flashing, and the battery became randomly unreliable.  Or reliably dead at 5AM as I’m leaving for the airport.  Twice.

Then there was that one incident where the rodents moved in and ate through the insulation protecting the cab from an engine fire.  Plus the window washer line.  And James read me the report from the mechanic mentioning something about five corpses.  “Plugging my ears… La la la la la… I can’t hear you.”

Oh, and did I forget to mention the ants?  For awhile the boys would groan and moan about having to ride in the Rat Mobile.  I tried to explain that they hadn’t made it into the cab of the car but whatevs… no half-eaten single serving trail mix bags and library books mucking-up my backseat?  Fine by me.

The most maddening thing is that all of the hydraulics have since given up the ghost.  I use a piece of PVC pipe to hold open the hood every night.  It seems field mice and mountain rats prefer roofs on their engine McMansions.

That reminds me of a story Granddad told me, courtesy of my little three-year-old nephew McMuffin, Bry Bry.  Seems he was practicing his archery at Granddad’s house but couldn’t seem to hit the target with his arrow.  After multiple attempts, he turns to his archery coach and declares, “Let’s make the grass the target.”  And he’s instantly transformed into a gold medalist.  Brilliant.

Meanwhile, back at the Rat Mobile… I’m hitting the button to open the back tailgate and the thing opens up to about chest height and then shuts itself.  I push the button again.  It opens and then closes.  I press the button over and over in exasperation as my groceries begin to melt in the parking lot.

Jake declares from his car seat, “Six times– new high score, Mom!”

Over the past two weeks or so, Jacob has developed an affinity for a Disney TV show called Bunk’d.  From what I can tell, it’s a tween sitcom that takes place at a fictional summer camp called Camp Kikiwaka.  There is one camper of most ethnic backgrounds including Ravi, Jorge, Zuri, Tiffany and Xander.  G-rated teen love mixed with antics and a laugh track.

I feel a little off balance given this new interest in shows that aren’t cartoons.  He vehemently denies liking the almost kissing scenes, despite the way he covers his face in giddy revulsion.

This new nine-year-old going on pre-tweeny Jacob says things like, “Wow Mom.  Just Wow.”  “Who does that?” And “Like, Duuuuh.”  Anytime I ask something such as, “Why do you only wear pajama bottoms?”  He says sassily, “Cuz I can.”  “Don’t judge.  Don’t judge.”  The weirdest of late is, “Nani?”  Which is a Yoda-like expression that appears to replace a confused, “What?”  He’s telling me that it’s Japanese.  Hmmmm.

This weekend Grandma Suzy somehow talked me into taking the boys with me to Trader’s Joe’s as a learning experience.  I wouldn’t want them almost growing-up and wandering around with a random armful of food like the three hundred college boys stuffing the aisles at my Trader Joe’s.

I was starting up the car in front of the vet clinic that graces the same strip mall and Jacob says to his brother, “Remember the boy and the girl we saw in there last time we were here?”

“Yeah.”

“They were holding hands and kissing.”

“I think they were really sad because probably their dog or their cat died.”

“Yeah, probably their dog.  Or maybe their cat died.”

“Definitely not a donkey,” says Nate.

“Or a frog,” says Jacob.