wild*life

I remember sometime earlier this year, I was driving to work on 280 and saw my first Google driverless car.  I couldn’t see what the driver was doing… I think his eyes were open.  Needless to say, I gave that Prius a wide berth.  It would be just like an Instagranny to rear end a Google Chaffeur.

It felt like something I should’ve written down so that sometime in my golden years, I could sit my little grandchild down and say in my rickety little grandma voice, “Sonny, it was the fifth of February, two thousand thirteen when I saw my very first self-driving horseless carriage.  A Tuesday I believe.”

I screwed-up once, but not again.

This past Friday, October fourth, I was waiting for Caltrain… regrettably it’s just your average choo-choo.  Made in Japan.  Older than me.  Does not travel at hypersonic speeds; when a young man materializes before me, wearing some unusual eyewear.

To my untrained Instagranny eye, it appears to be that new-fangled Google Glass.  Hmmm.

We board the train and Google Glass sits down across the aisle, facing me.  I think I’ll engage him in some old-fashioned conversation.

“Excuse me young man.  What are you wearing right now?”  (It sounded less creepy old lady in person.)

“Uh, Google Glass.”

And we proceed to talk for several minutes about how he has access to the latest futuristic technology and how it works.  Apparently no one can get their grubby antiquated hands on these bad boys till Christmas.  And, it turns out he’s fourteen years old.  I presume he’s some sort of coding protégé.

He sets me straight.  He is doing an internship with a software company to provide feedback on their app marketing campaign, which will be available via these LeVar Burton spectacles, presumably this holiday shopping season.  Kids these days.

I probably talked for five minutes with Sergey.  Actually, I didn’t ask his name.  He was adorable and prone to blushing and probably would have given me his screen name… DarkMoon?  Let’s just call him Sergey.  So, in that time, Sergey took my picture and recorded a ten second video of me.  All I heard him say was “Go-go-gadget!  Or go glass.” The train is noisy— I’m not entirely sure.

And then he evaporated at Palo Alto.  Like all boys from the future are prone to do.  But not before I shook my pocketbook at him and insisted he delete that video.

I really should have gotten a picture of him for my blog.  I’m sure I totally would have, if I was wearing the latest Google trifocals.  Only 77 shopping days left.

Tonight I’m in the lower bunk with Jacob and he asks for a Super Jake story involving a “tacodile.”  Fortunately, I’m familiar.  Somehow the movie marketeers have reached me with their Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 trailer tactics.  Note: a tacodile, technically tacodile supreme, is a crocodile with a taco head.

So I get to the climax of the story, where a little boy named Taco falls into the tacodile pit at Happy Hamburger Park and Zoo, and Jakey stops me.

“No, it’s Paco.”

“What?”

“I said Taco the other day and Helen told me his name is PAco.  It rhymes with Taco.”

I feel kind of relieved and kind of let down… and kind of hungry.

Quite some time ago, Jake declared green as his favorite color.  He gets all the green sippy cups.  And the green toothbrush.  And green trail shoes.  And he thinks he likes green apples.  Meanwhile, Nate has been… let’s just say, unable, to express his color preferences until just recently.  By default he’s been stuck with the blue or pink sippy cups.  The blue toothbrush.  The blue trail shoes.  And the blue striped swim towel.

Well, a couple of weeks ago Jacob comes home from school and says to me, “You know what they said to me at school today that was so mean?”

“Who?”

“My teachers.”

“What’d they say?”

“They said my eyes are brown.”

Uh oh.  He is insistent about green.  And my eyes are green and so he has a deeply held belief that his eyes are green.  Which they can be.  Technically I’d say his eyes are hazel.  A greeny-hazel.  So we had a talk about the beautiful complexities of hazel.

Nate seems to be much further ahead on the color identification track than his brother was at this age.  But he’s still experimenting with his favorite.  He always starts with yellow, and then tells me his favorite color is orange.

Yesterday we’re laying on the couch talking and I ask him, “What color are your eyes?”

“Lellow.”

“Yellow?  Are you sure?”

“No, orange.”

“You have orange eyes?”

“Yesh.”

Maybe in just the right light?…

By my calculations, we’ve been going to swimming lessons for 34 weeks.  No joke.  We’ve only missed four Saturdays in that time.  Plus on most Saturdays this summer, we also went outside to play in the kid pool and hot tub for at least two hours.

And today goes down in history as a major breakthrough for Nate.

After 34 weeks of swimming lessons… he went down the kiddie slide!  Can I get a woop woop?  WOOP WOOP.  Shocker of shockers.

Here’s how it happened…  Miss Christine, our teacher for the last 12+ weeks, noticed that Nathaniel has been making some significant progress.  I think she went so far as to say, “He’s getting so comfortable!”  We’ve developed a relationship with very little conversation up to this point.  Previously, if she so much as looked at Nate he would completely pout out his lips and lay his head down on the side of the pool.  She once complimented his perfect pouty pucker.  He glared.

Every now and then he gives her a high-five, but mostly, she instills the antithesis of swimming in him.  I hope she doesn’t take it personally.

In any case, Nate and I are immune to the pressures of doing what all the cool kids are doing.  We do our own thing.  For awhile Miss Christine stopped the hello and goodbye singing which made a marked improvement on Nate’s demeanor.  He still goes buck wild if we sing, “Nate is in the pool” to the tune of heigh-ho a derry-o.  No one should know he is in the pool.

Today I could tell things might be different.  He did lots of jumping in and swimming under water to me.  We’ve been practicing this for weeks and the “too deep for me’s” have completely subsided.  Now I ask if we’re going to go under water and he says, “We go unner, a little bit, unner the agua.”

We did two “up so high, down with me, swimmers in the middle, one-two-three’s” and Nate actually went under water of his own accord.  He has never done this particular swimming drill.  Then we did two “elevators go up-up-up, elevators go down-down-down, big breath eyes in” and he did that, too.  Two firsts in one lesson.  But then after just fifteen minutes he said he was all done and was hungry and wanted to eat a bar.

I distracted him with the platform and some rings.

Then came the ultimate test.  Miss Christine brought out the red and blue floating kid slide and Natesy said he wanted to go on it.  (Record scratch… everyone stops and looks toward the door.  Or the slide, if you will.)  Before he could change his mind we big arms and kickered our way straight over there.  He clambered up without missing a beat and didn’t even shrink away when Miss Christine actually made physical contact with his arm.  Swoosh into the pool and some underwater kicking straight to me.  WOOP WOOP.

He probably went down the slide at least seven times.  Then it all went downhill because Miss Christine had to tell him ‘no’ as he practically tried to pass Caitlin on her way up the slide.  He didn’t take the scolding too well and refused to go back on the slide.  Then when she put the slide away it was the end of the world.  We’d gone a couple of weeks without any tears.  All I can say is at least this week’s tears were due to the emotional roller coaster that is his new love affair with the water slide.

During the final goodbye song, Nate’s latest is, “No… yucky song.  Di-custing song!”  What could possibly illicit such a harsh critique?

If You’re Happy and You Know It.

Or, You Know You’re Not.

Oh the dreaded “incident report.”  A one page, illegible paper that comes home from preschool, generally three days after said “incident.”  It’s a fluid document; quite versatile— used in a variety of situations from playground road rash to well… you’ll see.

The last incident report we got for Jake was around August when he moved into his new class.  I’m actually not sure we even got a report, as the incident happened around pick-up time, which I guess is the ambiguous cusp of documentation compliance.  That one involved another boy named Hudson and mutual roaring in faces and ended with Jacob ineffectually stabbing him in the back with a pair of blunt lefty scissors.

Now we know why all kids across America have questionable scissor skills— clearly by design.

So when I came home earlier this week and Daddy said, “Jakey, you need to tell your mom about the incident report today,” I fittingly braced myself.

Here’s what Miss Amy wrote:

While we were lined up to go outside, another child put her hands on both sides of Jacob’s face.  Suddenly the other child kissed Jacob on the lips.  I was right there and immediately corrected the behavior.  I explained to both kids that kissing should be between families and not to kiss other kids at school.

Here’s how Jacob described it:

Jake: I don’t know… I was standing there and Dahilyn kissed me.

Me: Daylene?

Jake: She’s a Spanish girl.

Me: A Spanish girl?  You mean she speaks Spanish?

Jake: Yes.  She kisses all the boys.  She’s always kissing Taco.

Me: Taco?  Who’s Taco?

Jake: You know.  The boy I told you is always running around and kicking people.

Me: What did Miss Amy say?

Jake: She laughed.

Looks as though incident reports also allow for a bit of creative license.  Easy to recast yourself as disapproving disciplinarian instead of normal person who unexpectedly snorts with laughter when kids act like kids on the playground.

Kissing?  Whatever… more importantly, I gotta meet this boy Taco.

I’d say you’re never quite as in-tune with your daily vocabulary as you are when trying to raise two moderately civilized English-speaking monkeys.  I still remember that at Esther’s house, we could only say ‘rump.’  My second grade teacher, Mr. McGuire, had us calling it our gluteus maximus.  And I remember my two-year-old brother biting my grandfather in the derrière once while helping him in the garden.  All he could say after that was, “Pop hit head hoe,” over and over.  Later on, that same brother was always calling me ‘Buttface’ with gusto, so I guess it was anything goes at my house…

And now, a guest post from Grandma:

We  have been laughing everyday about this one…

Riding in the car this past Friday, after picking the boys up from school, they start calling each other “bum-bum” and grinning like it is the dirtiest word they cold possibly say!

We ask, “What does that mean?”

And Jacob tells us, “We can only say ‘bottom’ and not ‘butt,’ but Mama doesn’t know what bum-bum means.”

My how naive they think you are!

And then Uncle Geoff chimes in:

It was when they said “blow it out your bum-bum” in a voice like grandma’s that they caught my attention…

And then I thought:

Good one Bum-Bumface.  Good one.

This past Saturday I had my first evening out with Nathaniel James; just the two of us.  It went like this:

We decided to go out in the afternoon since this was our first official night on the town.  He asked me to drive.  At first glance, it didn’t appear he had dressed-up for the occasion.  To be fair, neither did I.  Though I did brush my teeth.

We decided to walk around Santana Row and grab a bite to eat.  After parking the car, the first thing he said to me was, “I want a treat!”  Boys… always trying to skip past the chit chat and get straight to dessert.

We both enjoyed a macaroon, some agua, and some people watching.  We saw a yellow Ferrari parked on the main drag.  He exclaimed, “Ooh look, a lellow race car, my favorite.”  He had me take a picture of him with the car to send to his dad (?).  He’s got some quirky speech thing going on.  I like it.  And we both like yellow.  At least we have that in common.

Then we headed to the almost worthless playground.  He took one spin down the slide and was scared-off by another user.  We took our soccer ball to the grassy area and played catch.  He impressed me with his pitching skills.  I like athletes.  But, after watching a baby playing in a rather questionable fountain, he became a little clingy.  Not really what I’m looking for.  Then we saw the yellow race car leaving and he directly put the blame on me and pouted.  A little bit of an emotional time bomb if you ask me…

He agreed to a bit of shopping.  We perused Paper Source for some wedding cards I’m delinquent in sending.  Out of the blue he exclaims, “I ‘Trong!”  At first I thought he was asking me to call him by another name.  Turns out he was just trying to impress me with his muscles.

We took a minor detour to Crate&Barrel for some gift cards to accompany our greeting cards.  He was like most men I’ve dated— rather impatient when it comes to shopping.  At one point he loudly requested, “I wanttogooutside.  Go outside, PEESE!”  Guess he’s outdoorsy.  That could be good.

We easily agreed on an outdoor seat at Pizza Antica.  When faced with two options of pizza or pasta, he immediately made up his mind and chose pizza.  I appreciate a decisive guy.  The conversation was a bit forced.  I felt like I had to carry the whole thing.  He was very interested in talking about his love of condiments.  And knives.  Red flag?  At one point he ingested salt straight from the shaker.

I asked for a little smooch and he readily obliged.  Toward the end he couldn’t stop looking at his phone.  And begging for his brother.  Seems he’s close to his sibling.  That seems positive.

But, he didn’t even offer to pick-up the tab.  He acted almost as though he didn’t even notice me giving my credit card to the waitress.  I guess this is the state of dating in 2013…

We headed back to my car and made our way home.  He freaked out when I put my sun visor to the side, blocking the driver’s side window.  “No like dat.  No like dat.”  He’s got quite the controlling side to him.  Not sure how I feel about that.

When we arrived at my house, I asked if he wanted to come in.  He accepted.  Then he said, “I want the remote control.”  Romantic.

I’m kind of on the fence— is he my type?  He is seriously cute.  Despite a rocky first date, I’m pretty sure it’s a love connection.  Actually, I’m positive.

Nate & the Lellow Ferrari

I recently enjoyed brunch with eight of my dearest high school pirates/friends of all time.  It was wondrous in that I just picked a date, sent out an Evite, and everyone showed-up.  Absent were the thirty e-mails it usually takes us to pick a date.  Plus three Doodle calendars.  And fifteen more e-mails to choose a location.  Miraculous!  If I could have gotten my two Washingtonians and one Angelino, it would have been a hole in one.

I just want to pause for a moment and feel grateful that I still have 11 girlfriends from high school.  *sigh*  OK, moving on…

So, at this brunch is where I got the assignment to be in charge of the Facebook outreach portion of our 2015 high school reunion planning.  Thus the never-ending references to that whole business.  Clearly there was no interview for this appointment.  As luck would have it, I found the breakfast conversation kept winding its way back to Instagram.  As in, “Oh Jaimie, you didn’t see that picture I took?  It’s on Instagram.  I don’t do much on Facebook anymore.”  Blah, blah, blah.  Like James said when I joined, “Facebook is over.”  And that’s exactly when I generally decide I can trust a technology isn’t’t just going to *poof* disappear and take all my time invested with it.

Now, I think it’s important that I create a little inventory of my social networking skills… if for no other reason than at some point I might need to modernize my resume to keep up with those young millennial whipper-snappers:

I collect colleagues on LinkedIn.  I have a Twitter account because I wanted to get on Pinterest and have unknowingly been tweeting all my pins to Jill.  I do my fantasy shopping and house design on Pinterest.  I blog.  Oh, and I now do the Facebook.  Plus I can create an Evite and a Doodle calendar.  That’s six things!  (If those last two count.)  But I’m told Tmblr is better and I should do Instagram instead and the other day I took a survey and it gave me a list of at least thirty social networking gizmos as ways I could “stay connected” with this organization.

Now back to my friends.  I’ve begun to notice a clear and consistent divergence in my best-friends-till-I’m-dead-and-gone group.  They are either little social media floozies, I mean connoisseurs, or part of a new group I’m going to call the Instagrannies.  Clearly I am not a connoisseur so I’m not going to attempt to describe the key characteristics of 75% of my social media savvy friends.  If they still are my friends after that floozie faux pas…

I am, however, the founder and president of the Instagrannies.  Here’s my start to our charter and founding principles:

• We believe cell phones are primarily for making calls, not receiving them.  Don’t expect us to pick-up.
• We believe everyone else has a cell phone so if you really need to find us, learn who we work with so you can call them or our significant others.  They know how to find us.  They carry cell phones.
• We believe one must be discerning as to what one might be signing-up for.  We recognize our capacity, or lack thereof, for more “projects.”  Yes, checking updates on Facebook is a project.
• We believe in finishing what we’ve started.  We have a never ending to-do list that involves organizing our photos and upgrading our Christmas decorations.  Joining more social media sites can’t be added to the list until these things are finally done.
• We’re comfortable with not finding out the sex of our unborn children.  I don’t know how this last one fits in, but I think this is a potential insight as to what separates the Connoiseurs from the Grannies?

We, therefore, the representatives of the Instagrannies, in antisocial media, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Zuck of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these internet networks, solemnly publish and declare, that these technogrannies are, and of right ought to be free and independent from mobile devices; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the Facebook, and that all connection between them and Instagram, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent grannies, they have full power to use their significant others’ accounts for clandestine research, to blog once a year, to shop on Etsy, to freeload off of Yelp reviews, and to do all other acts and things which independent grannies may of right do.  And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Pinterest, we mutually pledge to each other our snail mail addresses, our paper money and our land lines.

I hereby indoctrinate Alesia, Emily and Sarah into the club.

How ironic that the Instagrannies will likely never read this.  And if they do, certainly won’t ‘comment’…

From left to right: Connoisseur, Connoisseur, Instagranny (Treasurer), Digital Native, Connoisseur, Instagranny (Founder), Connoisseur, Connoisseur; (not pictured) Connoisseur

One of my earliest memories is of my mom threatening to sell me in the newspaper.  I had a good childhood, really, I did.  Technically she was threatening my brother and me.  Geoff cried interminably for the first three years of his life and I most likely spent that time pushing his buttons to make him cry.  What can I say?  I’m pretty sure that’s in the big sister job description.  In any case, when she would say this, I would envision myself rolled-up in a newspaper like a burrito, laying on some stranger’s doorstep.  Years and years later I found out she meant that she was going to place an ad in the Sentinel.  I’d say my vision seems considerably more effective.

Earlier this week, those two rug rats at my house pushed me to my limit.  And so I got to thinking, what is the modern day equivalent of the classifieds?  Craig’s List of course.  And though I’ve since stepped away from the the ledge (and tossing them over it), I think I should probably write my post now so as to show them I really mean business:

Listed under the category: for sale: baby+kid.  And here I thought I’d need to create my own category… Looks like they already have one.

Location: What is the most remote sounding state?  Idaho?  Utah?  Oooh, they have a link for Guam.

***POTTERY BARN KIDS***

(From experience, brand names and stars are the best way to get a lot of hits.  Do the all caps make it sound like I’m yelling?…  Good.)

Two healthy preschoolers for sale.  Like new condition.  Well-maintained on expensive organic food, clean water, and fresh air.  Minor scratches and scrapes— generally self-healing.  Extremely long-lasting rechargeable batteries included.  Prefer fuel of high octane treats.  Features include roaring at surprisingly high decibels, advanced negotiation skills, hiding under bunk beds while naked, and dancing around in piles of Swiffered debris.  One is potty-trained.  Both are almost digitally literate.  Rarely come when called; hearing likely broken and irreparable.  Sold as a set only; will throw-in mountains of toys, parmesan cheese, and dirty laundry for free.

Pricing available upon request.  Free shipping.  Serious buyers only.

* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with Child Protective Services or other interests

They took this picture all by themselves!

Several months back, my sister-in-law, Erin, told a story that I’ve just got to write down before I forget it.  I’m sure I’m not going to get it entirely right, but here goes…

My nephew Covin comes home from kindergarten with his dad and has some “news” to report to his mom.  His dad says, “So Covin, are you going to tell your mom what you got in trouble for saying at school today?”

And Covin says sheepishly, “Mom, I got in trouble for saying the ‘s’ word at school.”

And Erin says, “Covin, you said sh*t at school today?!”

And Covin says, “Uh no, I got in trouble for saying ‘stupid.'”

Woops.  Isn’t that just the best story, though?  I love it.

In our house “stupid” is definitely out of bounds.  As is “butt” and “Oh my god” and not much else… yet.

Lately Nate’s had a bit of trouble with the word “fox.”  Sometimes it’s fine, and sometimes it’s… not.  A few weekends ago I find him wandering around the living room, helping me to clean-up the toys.  He’s got his backpack from Grandma and Granddad that came with little stuffed animals and so far he’s found the black bear, the brown bear and the eagle.  He turns to me, shrugs his shoulders and asks, “What the fox?”  Only that’s not how it came out.

Probably’s been spending too much time with Auntie Erin…