wild*life

After we were freed from Zoom School and the boys descended the mountain, our school system announced free meals. James and I gladly shoved the lunch bags to the darkest back corner of the deepest cupboard and embraced the simplification of our morning routine. True freedom and luxury can be found in eliminating the daily squeegeeing of shower glass and the packing of school lunches.

So every day when I pick-up Nate from school I ask him what he had for prison lunch. That about sums up his general feedback on the school lunches at Pacheco. I’m told the chicken strips are “wet,” the hamburgers have “sawdust,” and the cheese in the mac and cheese is radioactive and “glows.” He does like the orange chicken, but they only give you “two bites.”

Please note, this does not reflect all school district lunches. The ones in Merced are famously delicious and overseen by one of the best in the biz. She makes most of my holiday meals and my craft cocktails and that one knows how to cook.

As you can imagine, our prison lunch conversations are generally pretty entertaining. Nate likes the spicy chicken sandwich, but it’s never spicy enough. I mean this is Pacheco, where we’re learning in Spanish and English– we eat real Taki’s… not those faux Taki’s from Trader Joe’s. I once heard a parent use this fun fact to disparage our rival school near the country club.

We recently learned all of the lunches are made at Jacob’s school and then shipped out to the rest of the district. Apparently Laguna is the prison where Martha Stewart did her time. This may explain why Jacob loves just about everything they serve for prison lunch. Or he’s fourteen. He especially raves about their salad bar.

A few months ago, I pick Nate up and ask him my usual series of questions. He also likes to talk about PE… but that’s only Tuesdays and Thursdays which is definitely not enough for him. He’s looking forward to daily PE at Laguna. Just another middle school prison perk. So I ask him what he had for prison lunch and he tells me “dog food.”

“What? Dog food? C’mon now… it couldn’t have been that bad.”
“It was like a Lunchable.”
“I don’t understand. Was it like wet dog food or dry dog food?”
“Dry.”
“Like Kibble?”
“Yeah. It was pretty good.”

This exchange had previously earned itself top ranking in Letterman’s Prison Lunch Countdown. Till a couple of weeks ago.

“So what was for prison lunch today?”
“Goldfish.”
“Goldfish?! That’s not a lunch.”
“That’s all they had.”
“Seriously? What else was there?”
“Well, you could get a piece of cheese.”
“What about fruit?”
“Yeah. They had those mini orange things where you eat the skin.”
“Kumquats?”
Silence.

We checked the website and it said lunch was (sawdust) hamburgers. Nate said they don’t have a late lunch. They hadn’t run out of hamburgers and desperately turned to goldfish. I text Cruz’s mom for an independent third party data source. Unprompted, Cruz confirms goldfish.

I’m not one to really ever call the school except to lie about absences. They really do want me to lie. I hate it, but I can just tell that’s what they want me to do. So I call the school and Amy answers.

“Hi Amy. My son just told me all they served for lunch today was goldfish. Is that true?”
“Mmmm, that can’t be right.” She says as though it’s preposterous.
“I’m wondering if maybe you could look into that and give me a call back?”
“Oh yes, of course. I’ll check, but that just doesn’t sound possible.”

Yeah, I didn’t get a call back from Amy…

I’ve always found certain countries and cultures speak to certain souls. The first time I understood this phenomenon was Jamie A.’s mom’s love of France. I’d met my first Francophile. Then I noticed my dad’s an Anglophile. And my brother’s an Anglophile. Nathaniel is a third generation Anglophile. I recommend inviting Nate on a casual lunch date and speaking only in British accents.

Personally, I’ve have always been a Mexiphile. So are Alesia and Jennifer Anne. And James was a Japanophile.

I once met a creepy American guy in Madrid who practiced martial arts and collected asian tchotchkes. You know the type. Fortunately James was more into the simplicity of design and impeccable craftsmanship. He didn’t have any belts or katanas. He taught me about kintsugi and shou sugi ban and of course, bonsai.

At the age of 5, Jacob became a Japanophile, like his dad, when he developed an insatiable hunger for Pokémon. And sushi. Jake credits his early literacy to Pokémon and those teeny tiny ant-sized words. He just had to know what they were saying and I was an unreliable medium.

So to top off Spring Break 2023, the boys and I took a short roadtrip down to LA to visit Little Tokyo.

Jake and Nate have had a multi-year fascination with “conveyor-belt sushi.” I don’t know where this originated but my guess would be YouTube. So we went back to the source to determine which restaurant to visit. We took a page from James’ Disneyland build-up, ingesting YouTube videos to narrow in on exactly how to spend our caloric intake.

Friday morning we woke-up, filled our water bottles, prepped our Google maps, and set out for the closest Japan Town this side of the Pacific. We got a front row parking spot and headed straight to Yamazaki Bakery. We chose a cube croissant, a sugar ring donut, and the melon pan. Nate and I had to get back in line to buy some canned guava nectar and a milk tea. The pressure was on as we watched Jacob on a bench in the distance, inhaling our freshly bought pastries while we waited. Fortunately we made it back out to the plaza in time. My favorite was the cube croissant– it was really unique with a ribbon of red bean paste and some sort of white cream like a danish. All the bloggers raved about the Japanese melon pan. The boys declared it Mexican pan dulce of which they are experts. This explains the “pan” and why we mostly heard Spanish behind the counter at the Japanese bakery.

As we ate our second breakfast we enjoyed looking at the corn dog joint’s colorful windows. Nate regrets not eating there, too. Next time.

Most of the shops weren’t open yet so we decided to take a spin around Nijiya Market to preview what we’d buy later. This ended up being the highlight for Nate and me. We saw all kinds of interesting snacks and delicacies. On our second trip back at the end of the day he picked out the spiciest looking chips, the spiciest looking ramen, and the sourest looking lemon candies. Jacob found some colorful anime-themed drinks in the cooler and a bag of cookie things. I bought Japanese mayo, yuzu, and sesame salad dressing.

After a walk to the bookstore, we ate an early lunch at Kura Revolving Sushi Bar. It’s a restaurant chain that started in Japan. We were seated at Table 8… an auspicious sign. Our server then showed us how to lift the plates correctly so as to spring the little clear dome open as the sushi passes by on the lower slow train conveyor belt. He also showed us how to use the iPad above our table to peruse the menu and order anything which would arrive on the upper bullet train conveyor belt. Then our server tested us with his demo dome… making sure we all successfully passed before we were allowed to be left alone.

The boys ordered two Sprites from the iPad and I made a quick break for the loo. This is my only regret. I came back and the yellow minion drink robot was just leaving… fortunately it returned to deliver sodas to the guys behind us and I got to see its cutie eyes and hear its Hello Kitty voice. I’ve never been big on robots but if they’re short and bring drinks and have cutie eyes, I say more robots, please.

We ate all kinds of sushi. Rolls. Nigiri. Nate and I tried the conch. Strange crunchy texture– do not recommend. The boys chose watermelon for dessert. Once we’d eaten our fill, we placed the plates down this little perfectly plate-shaped chute where it counted them up and calculated the check. We just exceeded the 15 plate threshold with 16, winning ourselves a surprise prize. It came down from a little machine above the conveyor belt, spitting out a round black plastic Easter Egg. The egg produced a little baggie of generic Legos to build your own… wait for it… sushi roll. Pure delight.

We left Kura to find Japan Town full of visitors. As we waited for some of the shops to open at noon, Jacob felt ill. He’d eaten way too much and had to rest on a bench. It wasn’t clear whether sitting or walking was helping but he rallied when we found some sweatshirts at Japangeles. Jacob’s clothes are currently verging on crop-tops. Mom hack: shopping trip disguised as sushi-eating expedition.

We tried to go to the Japanese garden on the roof of the Double Tree hotel. For some reason the doors were chained shut and we could only see the garden through the windows. We poked around some other little shops and then stumbled into Bunkado on our way back to the garage. They had my favorite Hasami porcelain so I bought a little cream and sugar set that matches my mugs. The shopkeeper asks if we’ve been upstairs. Why no, we haven’t! We head upstairs and find the sweatshirt Jacob saw that brought us in in the first place. I find the cutest little wooden tray that goes with my tea set. There is a lady selling linen sprays. I buy Jacob a second sweatshirt. Turns out I have to go back downstairs to buy the wooden tray. After three transactions the boys are convinced we’ve got to get out of this store.

As I’m signing the receipt at lunch I pause when I notice the headline reads:

Your server’s name is James.

Of course it is.

We head back to the car with our stomachs full of sushi, our arms full of shopping bags, and Dad in our hearts.

It appears I’m an infinite font of stories featuring our local radio DJ, JoJo Lopez.  What up JoJo?

Ugh, lesson learned.  Never google radio hosts.  The mismatch of voice to face is purely avoidable self-torture.

So for a couple of weeks the boys and I have wanted to call into Talk-About-It-Tuesday.  This is where you can call in and talk about anything that’s on your mind.  I’m realizing this morning show is new for me because James was on drop-off and I was on pick-up.  While I was busy managing product teams in India via Zoom, they’ve been enjoying each day’s theme:

Monday: Angel Readings with Bonnie (Ohhh the stories I could write on what the boys think about this…)
Tuesday: Talk About It Tuesday
Wednesday: Woman Crush Wednesday
Thursday: Kids These Days
Friday: Joke of the Week

I program the number into my phone and then last Tuesday, as we’re driving to school, I call in over the speakerphone and say something to the effect of the following on the recorded line:

What up JoJo?  This is Jaimie, Jacob, and Nate.  For weeks we’ve been dying to know if it’s really Morgan Freeman doing the voiceover for the local lawyer commercial, or is it a deep fake?  We have to know, please tell us!

As soon as I hang up, Jacob and Nate have melted through the backseat and are a puddle of pure teenage embarrassment seeping into the asphalt of Los Osos Valley Road behind my Volvo.

“Mom!  Why did you say our names??  Now someone’s going to come and kill us!” (My internet security lectures appear to be working… maybe too well.)

“I can’t belieeeeve you Mom.  Now everyone will know it was us.  Why did you do that?”

What started out as a fun family fone call has flamed out fast.  Whatevs.  Just be glad I didn’t roll up to your school in my red Mercedes convertible with huge rollers in my hair, covered by a scarf.  And then when you yell at me through gritted teeth, pull around the corner to let you out in front of the crowd of middle schoolers applying more eyeliner with one hand as they smoke cigarettes with the other.

We drop off Jake in all his cringe.  Nate and I continue on.  This sparks a conversation about deep fakes and the legality of impersonating someone as famous as Morgan Freeman for commercial voiceover work.

And I say, “Oh, there’s this guy.  He’s so good.  He sounds exactly like Trump.  He’s way better than the guy on Saturday Night Live who plays Trump.”  (I leave out the part where Alec Baldwin also somehow shot and killed someone while on a movie set…)

And Nate says, “If he’s so good, did they put that guy on the show?”

And I’m like, “No… it’s probably one of the hardest shows to get on.  It’s basically impossible.”

And Nate says, “But there are other people on the show?…”

And I respond, “Well yeah…”

“Then it’s not impossible Mom.  It’s totally possible.”

I just love how he thinks.  And our Talk-About-It-Tuesdays.

Lately Jacob is regularly accusing me of being “uncultured.”  It mostly stems from my complete lack of familiarity with globally popular memes, movie lines, and music.

It’s the story of my life and I gave up worrying about it when I was his age.  I did not have MTV.  I’ve always been too sleepy for SNL.  I grew-up on a mountain with five TV channels that I can recite to this day: 2, 8, 11, 35 and 46.  My dad only listened to classical music.  My mom only listened to jazz.  And Lionel Richie.  I am an expert when it comes to Lionel Richie.  This is infinitely useful…

Most of these conversations come up in the car while we’re listening to the radio.  At least the boys appreciate my rendition of the Sexy Baby song.  We really don’t understand this reference to everyone being a sexy baby, but we sing it just the same.  It’s very Whoville.  We are monsters on the hill.  (Side note: It’s a Taylor Swift song… I’ve heard it one meellion times and I’m shocked.  See?  Child of elevator music and smooth jazz.)

Yesterday JoJo finally plays a new song, which is refreshing given the overplayed Sexy Baby and the I Wish I Knew You Wanted Me song.  He tells us it’s sung by SZA.  It sounds like Scissor, but with a thick New York accent.

And I ask, “Did he just say her name is Scizzuh?  Yo.  My name is Scizzuh… and this is my sisduh…” and I don’t have a punchline.

Jacob immediately responds with a perfectly timed, “Paypuh.”

Oh how I want to be this clever.

Last Friday I speed pack the Audi for Bako Round 2.  This is the big one.  The All Stars Section 10 playoffs.  There can only be one winner.  And that winner goes to Western States to face the best AYSO All Star teams from California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.

We hit the road and it’s the pinnacle of pretty.  The drive to Bakersfield is never more scenic than the March after sequential atmospheric rivers.  Carpets of wildflowers in golds and violets.  It almost distracts you from the moonscape of randomly placed ant-like oil drills.  Almost.

Per the yoozh, we check-in to the same hotel, one room over.  We have dinner at the same Mexican restaurant we went to with Dad last year.  I lay everything out so the 5:30am alarm is less alarming.

Saturday we hit the pitch with our first game against Magic Mountain.  Technically they call themselves Castaic but clearly Magic Mountain is better branding.  We win 6:0.  Our second game is against Santa Barbara.  We know not to discount the gauchos.  We win 6:2.  If we’d had them more than once, this ref crew most certainly would have earned themselves a secret Spanish nickname.  We code name all the worst refs.  Cruz started it with Las Hamburguesas.  Of course one of the Hamburguesas is in Bakersfield.  She is everywhere.

Our third game was against Kern River Valley, which is a more picturesque name for Bakersfield.  We won 7:0.  Their best kid got megged a couple of times by our players and rather than hanging his head, he jokingly asked Jose for his autograph.  It was the best example of sportsmanship I’ve ever seen– the kids just had fun and didn’t let the score ruin their last game as a team.

That night we eat a big birthday dinner at Hungry Hunter with Grandma and Granddad and go to bed early.  We arrive back at the frigid tundra at 7AM.  Jacob makes his car nest with his new down blanket, all the pillows, and a hot spot.  I’m smart enough to hide the individually wrapped pieces of Nate’s birthday Texas sheet cake.

The semifinal game is against Sherman Oaks/Van Nuys.  Unfortunately, they’re not lucky enough to live near a Magical Mountain.  It’s a hard fought game.  We’re winning at halftime 1:0 but then they come back and score.  We win 2:1.  The boys go to the corner and create an olé olé olé olééééééééé huddle that even Brazil would admire.

The final is next.  This is what we’ve been waiting for.  And who do you think it’s against?
You guessed it.
Cutler-Orosi.
Say it with a sneer.

We recognize Blue Hair.  He’s gone from #12 to #9.  But #6 is still #6.  Let the battle begin.

Rogelio scores our first goal.
They score on us.
Nate scores our second.
The next quarter we watch helplessly.
In a matter of moments we’re down by 2 goals.
Their goalie’s drop kick is 80% of the field.
We watch multiple mistaken reads as the ball bounces over our defenders, and then our goalie.
Blue Hair powers one under the crossbar from the top of the box.
There’s still a lot of game left people!
Rogelio scores our third goal and it’s beautiful.
He kisses his knuckle and points to the sky.
The momentum shifts.
We can do this.
At halftime we’re losing 3:4.

Nate comes back in, dribbles, cracks a hard shot.
The goalie baubles it and Easton crashes the net.
We’re tied.  Let’s go!
One of the Cutler coaches angrily lashes out at the refs.
He’s a giant bear of a man… he’s calmed by the Cake Moms.
This is the Cutler crowd I remember from last year.
We’ve all had multiple out-of-body heart attacks by this point.
Emotions are high.  Our brains are not fully functioning.

It’s 4:4 and the fourth quarter.
Please, please don’t make me endure penalty kicks.
Rogelio has a beautiful cross to Nate, volley, gooooooooal.
The crowd explodes.

We win 5:4.

We’re elated.  Cutler’s in tears.  Looks like they had the good sense not to bring cake.  It’s the third back-to-back Bakersfield title for SLO Boys U12 All Stars.

As we drive home it begins to rain.  Big fat drops.  And I’m reminded that last weekend, as we climbed the hill in James’ car, we passed the exact point when last year I’d called him to tell him about our Sunday.  My eyes tear-up as I feel it wash through me.  At that exact moment, Santería, comes on the radio.  And I know he knows.

It was the best, most beautiful weekend in Bakersfied.  Bet you’ve never heard that before…

Last year I did a series of posts leading-up to Bakersfield and then fell off the blog wagon.  This year’s an opportunity for redemption.

Last Friday I pack up the Audi, pick the boys up after Jacob’s soccer tryouts, and drive two-and-a-half hours to where Southern California’s rec soccer youth’s dreams go to live and die— Bakersfield.  Or Bako as the cool kids call it.

You may recall that sometime during the pandemic, Nate told me his dream was to play in Bakersfield.  Then I took him twice and he told me it was terrible.  What, you don’t like Oildale?

Now his dreams are even bigger.  Recently Nate calculated whether Mbappe will retire before he can play with him.  Love that growth mindset.

So this past weekend was with the FBI.  If you’ve skipped the tutorial, this is our season team made-up of some boys who are brand new to soccer and some boys who are deeply offended if you don’t immediately recite Mbappe, Neymar, and Messi as the starting forwards for PSG.  Extra credit if you name drop Ekitike.  And pronounce it right.  So it’s a mix of skill levels and there is a lot of opportunity for dramatic up’s and down’s based on our substitution plans.  5 games over 2 days.  Most kids haven’t played much since the season ended the first weekend in December.

Our first game is against Agoura Hills/Westlake.  So… L.A.  We’re up 5:2 at halftime and run away with it by the end, winning 11:4.

Next game is Quartz Hills.  So… L.A.  It’s tied 3:3 at halftime and the opposing coach is pretty confident.  But we pull ahead and the quartzie crumbles.  One of their players disappears behind the goal and doesn’t want to come back.  Their coach yelled at him.  He’s kind of losing it.  He pulls his goalie out of goal, which Nate and Rogelio (pronounced Ro-hell-ee-o) just can’t resist.  The coach starts yelling snide remarks at us from across the field.  He’s under some mistaken belief that we’ll lose points for every goal we score over 7.  Read the rules, Bruv.  This is Bako.  We move our front line to the back and still win 11:3.  After the game, the 6’2″ coach accuses our littlest player of staring him down and hitting him during the high-five walk.  The one where you walk in a line and purposely hit each others’ hands.  He makes a big scene and I usher the boys back to our camp for Uno and sandwiches.

We show up to our third game against South Oxnard, yeah… L.A., and these poor kids are already done.  They’re not built for 3 games in a day.  We win 9:1.  Nate has 5 assists, which is something we’re working on.  Sadly, our team also suffers some tears and a concussion and we’re down to two subs.

The next morning we’re back out in the freezing cold at 7:15am.  That extra 15 minutes is pure luxury.  Our first game is against one of the two Cutler-Orosi’s.

What’s that?  What are you saying?

I asked the same thing last year when Coach Ben said these words to me.  I thought maybe it was a coach’s hyphenated last name.  Or a brand of multi-level marketing for kitchen knives.  Turns out it’s two towns in Tulare County… combined population 18,180.  They eat, sleep, and breathe soccer.  They come to Bakersfield and expect to win it.

Last year we lost to them in semi-final penalty kicks and the Raptors took fourth place.  We returned two weekends later with the All Star Legends and wouldn’t you know it… our final game was against, you guessed it… Cutler-Orosi.  They are our nemesis.

So on Sunday morning we face-off against one of the Cutler teams.  They have 2 in the final 4.  Of course they do.  Twice the nemesis.

There are several big guys– #12 with blue hair is definitely a threat.
We’re winning.
They come back and tie it up.
Nate fouls a kid in the box.
They’re awarded a penalty.
Blue hair misses!
We’re down 2:3 at halftime.
Cutler comes up with a new fast break plan where little #6 slips past our defense over and over.
4 times to be exact.
Calvin has 6 big saves in goal.
We lose the game 5:7.
Our team’s in tears.
We feed them sandwiches.
They’re happy again.

A couple hours later we play Santa Ynez for third and win 7:2.  The final is Cutler versus Cutler.  The team we lost to takes first place.  They were the underdog of the Cutlers so they’re ecstatic.  While we’re playing Santa Ynez, their parents start watching our game.  They notice the passing and scoring happening between Nate and Roge and it really is fun to watch.  I hear one dad say, “Man… that’s next level.”  For posterity: Over the course of the weekend, Nate had 17 goals/16 assists and Roge had 22 goals/7 assists.  Bradley and Genoah also scored twice each.  FBI played as a team and it showed.  We were so proud.  And next weekend the All Stars have one more chance at Bakersfield redemption.

I’ll never forget when we won the All Stars final last year with the Legends.  Against Cutler-Orosi.  It was close, but we beat them.  And I remember the Cutler moms passing out the championship celebration cake they’d brought.  The kids were half-heartedly eating that cake.  It didn’t taste good.  You could just tell.

Because nothing tastes better than victory.

Nate plays a lot of soccer.  Just ask Uncle B.  Late last year, he generously came to help with shuttling the boys around.  Explaining Nate’s practice schedule was like trying to understand Brett’s career path in the fire fighting system.  I’ve been trying to follow it for years but just never really get how it works…  Guess we’re even.

So yes, Nate’s technically been playing on four teams.  It’s not as bad as that sounds.  Here’s a quick tutorial with the added bonus that the first two have retired permanently and the third is close behind.

Pacheco Panthers: The school district had a goal to get a bunch of kids outside and in that, it succeeded.  Best described as after school recess.  Practices are Tuesdays and Thursdays but earlier than Mustangs.  “Games” are on Fridays.  Red jersey.

FBI: This is our AYSO rec team that I assistant coached.  We just got back from Bakersfield and our FBI final finale– will recap in my next post.  Practices are Mondays and Wednesdays and games are on Saturdays.  Jersey is a black and gray jail inmate stripe.  Shiny short ’80’s shorts.

SLO United: This is our AYSO All Stars team.  We only play weekend tournaments and are nearing the end with playoffs coming up in two weeks… back in Bako.  Practices are Mondays and Wednesdays and combined with the FBI as needed.  Gray or white jersey with snazzy yellow socks.

CCU Mustangs: Central Coast United Soccer Club.  The team came together from last year’s All Stars program.  This competitive team plays year round.  Practices are Tuesdays and Thursdays and we call it training because we’re British.  Or at least the British Commonwealth.  Green jersey for away games and white for home.

Pass this test and you may get promoted to Battalion Chief, or Assistant Chief, or Team Manager…

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day.  And when I woke-up I had this almost instant recollection that James and I got engaged on Valentine’s Day.  He’d never really bought into the holiday.  Hallmark holiday blah blah blah.  But he thought that maybe if he proposed it would change his mind.  It didn’t really work.  Maybe because he proposed on a hand-me-down beige loveseat in a one bedroom apartment in Mountain View and I was sick as a dog.  Romantic.

Still… I was really missing my Valentine.

Nate and I dropped Jacob at school and continued down LOVR, the coincidentally romantic acronym for Los Osos Valley Road.  As we’re driving he’s like, “Why do we even have Valentine’s Day anyway?”  Hmmm, maybe it’s genetic…

“Well it’s a day to make sure your loved ones know how much you love them.”

“But that’s basically every day.”  So sweet, right?  And then he adds…

“I like it because I get candy at school.”

In Nate’s class they did an exercise where you walk around and write nice adjectives about each other.  I think the last one says “funny” but he swears it says “furry.”  He erased “Hot.”