Baseball: A Squirrel's Memoir

Although spring is one of my favorite seasons of the year, there is one aspect that I hate. Baseball. I can tolerate baseball on television. I can sit next to Cal and embroider, and we have painless husband-wife bonding time. But that’s not what I hate. What I hate is organized baseball teams. Okay, it’s not that exactly. I’m really glad that Jake is playing on a high school team—good exercise, male war bonding rituals, etc. What I hate is bleacher duty. Freezing my butt off in the stands during the early spring. (How can February be considered spring? It was two degrees above freezing this morning.) I hate marinating in my own sweat and serving as mosquito bait by early summer.

I’d hoped when little league was over that we were done with sports. Little league was its own exquisite torture. Besides three boys on three teams playing at three different locations at the same time, Luke also became an umpire at age 12 when he passed the umpiring exam. And because he was big for his age 6’1” and broad and, therefore, more physically intimidating, he was the behind-the-plate umpire, who got screamed at by parents and coaches alike. (This was New England and they scream at umpires. Yeah, that was fun for me, sitting in the stands and having to keep my mouth shut.) Oops, sorry for that digression.

Now before you think that I was one of those women who was never exposed to sports, who never played, I wasn’t. I played women’s softball. I was the catcher. (I think I was assigned the position because it was the spot where I could do the least damage.) And everything was fine, until there was a play at home base. I got on the bag, crouched, and readied my glove. As the ball came towards me, I caught a glimpse of the runner. She was a freight train. I was a skinny, stupid squirrel standing on the tracks, keeping her from softball glory. But I steeled my muscles and my resolve. I would catch that ball, and she would be out. My teammates were counting on me...Freight-train girl plowed right threw me. I ate dirt. And the idea of balls, gloves, and bats as a fun pastime was forever lost.

Yeah, so baseball has started. Jacob is excited. Let the games begin. I’ll be that mom in the stands cheering the team and yelling, “Go, Jacob. Run over the catcher! You can do it.”

Jezebel

I am an animal person. Not the sort who kisses their dog or shares a bed with them. (Cal and I have had too many babies/sick toddlers share our bed over the years, so there’s no way we’re sharing the bed with an animal.) And I’m allergic to most animals. But I am an animal person.

I’ve never owned a cat, but from what I’ve observed they do their thing and let you think you own them. They deign to grace you with their presence, and you’re supposed to be grateful. And that obviously works for cats and their owners.

Dogs are different. They’re pack animals and they want to be part of the family. They have emotional needs. Sometimes it’s getting their ears scratched. Sometimes it’s attention, which may be by demanding water for their water bowl. And if that means tipping over their full bowl of water, so they can “make” it empty and demand water, so be it. Sometimes they just want to be near “The Master.” Calvin is the master. And our dog Jezebel will do anything/everything necessary to be with The Master. Even if it means being naughty.

Normally, Jezebel sleeps on a big blanket in the boys’ room. But she’d rather sleep in the master’s room. So she made plans.

I woke up during the middle of the night to strange noises. I had the inevitable thought: Burglars. But then, it didn’t sound like people. And no hooded figure walked in our dark room. So I thought I was dreaming and went back to sleep. And I woke up later. Noises again.  From underneath the bed. And I knew. Jez’d surreptitiously snuck out of the boys’ room. Crossed the house. Crept through Ariel’s room. Slunk across our bedroom and buried herself under our bed—that way no one would see her and banish her to the boys’ room.

In the morning we couldn’t quite figure out how she did it. There were three closed doors between where Jez was sleeping and where we sleep. But Labs are quite handy with their noses and very persevering. (Our previous Lab Jill could open the backdoor, which, like the rest of our doors, has a knob and not a handle. Though she did it through brute force. If you apply enough pressure at just the right spot, a door knob will “pop” open.)

In the morning, Jez was rebuked and made appropriate gestures of shame, i.e. sad eyes. Though secretly she was giddy.  And now, she’s carrying her tail a bit more arrogantly, and I know she’s thinking, “I’ve done it once, you silly humans. I’ll do it again.”


Yesterday I posted "Ten Things You'd Probably Rather Not Know About Me" on my book blog.


I also did a guess post on the challenges and rewards of writing historical fiction on Word for Words blog. 


Here are some photos of Jezebel.

Shakespeare and the Three Little Pigs

As many of you know, I love Shakespeare. (Despite the PG Wodehouse quote that says about Shakespeare, "It sounds well enough, but it doesn't actually mean anything.") And I love teaching Shakespeare. I've taught Hamlet, The Scottish play, i.e., Macbeth, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, and soon Henry V. The words, the meter, the depth, the allusions... Okay, you get it.

Recently, some friends shared this YouTube video with me. (Thanks, Darren & Maggie!) So I'm going to share it with you all because we all need a smile in the morning. Think of it as Shakespeare meets The Three Little Pigs meets a Redneck. Enjoy!

Friday Five

Favorite Five Ways to Pass Rainy Days

It’s been raining here almost all month. And, while I actually love rainy days and thunderstorms, it’s getting old. So for all of you who are dealing with dreary weather, here are some of our favorite ways to pass the days and nights.

1. Play games.

Of course, this leads to long discussions and negotiations because we have lots of games and lots of opinions. For example, the guys favorite game is Killer Bunnies. But I hate a game whose point is to kill the other players’ bunnies and get the magic carrot. But the boys love the cards, which read “chocolate-covered anti-matter raisins.” “Quite irascible refractable cheese balls.” “Highly explosive missile package.” Etc. But before you think I’ve taken the moral high ground, my favorite game is Guillotine, where you collect the heads of executed nobles.

2. Read aloud.

We’re currently reading aloud P. G. Wodehouse. There’s nothing like reading Wodehouse to make you smile. For example:

“I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.” 
― P.G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves

“She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when". ” 
― P.G. Wodehouse

“Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.” 
― P.G. Wodehouse

3. Stream Masterpiece Theater

We’ve watched Downton Abbey, Sherlock, and now we’re watching Island At War.

4. Hide under the table/bed/desk.

This is what our tough black Lab Jezebel does. She’s terrified of thunder and lightning. In fact, she won’t even come out of her hiding place to eat. So she’s lost a few pounds. Hmm. I wonder if we can market this as a diet plan—The Fabulous Lab Fear Diet. I’m sure there’s a book deal in there somewhere.

5. Hydraulic Cement Your Basement

When it rains this much, the water table rises above the level of the ground. So every crack in your basement begins to seep/trickle/fountain water. But good ole hydraulic cement will cure it. My thought is that it would be quicker and easier to give the whole basement a coat of hydraulic cement, but no one else seems to agree.

If you have any rainy day ideas, I’d love to hear about them.

And now for your Friday fun (which is number 6 on my fun-things-to-do-on-rainy-days list--watch YouTube videos).

Hacked Again

It wasn’t enough that my Twitter account got hacked. Nope. My Gmail account was hacked too. (Thankfully, it doesn’t appear that any emails were sent out advertizing products whose uses are a mystery to me.) But my Gmail account didn’t even have the same password as my Twitter account. (In fact, my passwords were listed as “strong.” Now they’re a random assortment of letters and symbols, which I’m sure I’ll forget.) GRRR. The good news is that Gmail sent me a notice immediately, told me where the account was hacked from (Singapore), and gave me step-by-step instructions to limited the damage, which included changing the password, shutting down any account access not from my laptop, running virus scans, and checking my contacts list for people I don’t know. My account should now be safe.

But here’s the thing. Why would anyone want to hack my account? I am not a drug dealer masquerading as a pastor’s wife. I am not an art thief posing as the mother of four children. I am not a wealthy benefactress pretending to be a poor writer. And unless the hacker knows something I don’t, I’m pretty sure I haven’t written the next New York Times best seller. So why hack my accounts? The only thing exciting in my computer, besides my novels, are my Facebook Scrabble games with my daughter. Aside from increasing the hacker’s vocabulary—yes, jarl, qi, za, qat are all real words—there’s not much point in hacking my Scrabble games.

Oh, wait, I know what it is. It’s my secret identity. I’m really an international spy involved in the corporate espionage of all the really high tech companies that call Chattanooga home. Phew! Now I understand it. Hmm. I guess I need to notify my clients.

BTW, a copy of my novel, Screwing Up Time, is available as a prize at the new blog Novel d'Tales. Click here if you'd like to enter the contest. 

A Winter Without Snow

The end of January is quickly approaching. And I’ve come to the realization that we’re going to have a winter without snow. What’s the point of cold, gray days if you don’t have snow? I realize that the city of Chattanooga has only one snow plow and two sanders, but still...

Instead, we’ve had day after night after day of rain. And the high today is 65. It’s like we hit the fast forward button to spring. Now don’t get me wrong, spring is my favorite time of year in the South. So that’s good. But there’s a problem. A big problem.

Without a heavy ground freeze, none of my late summer weeds died. I blew off weeding in the fall (while I worked on my novel) and cursed the weeds, “Die in the winter freeze.” Only it didn’t happen. And now those weeds are mocking me—they’re huge. They’re dropping seeds. If they had faces, they’d be laughing.

I try not to take stock of my yard and garden when I go outside. But wearing sunglasses doesn’t help much. The massive green patch of clover in the midst of dormant lawn is hard to miss. Strands of Bermuda grass poking out of my liriope borders mean hours of work. And those areas that I didn’t get around to mulching...well, at least there’s Round-up.

What I needed was a good dose of snow—nothing like a clean white blanket to make everything look tidy. Then, I could pretend that my only chore for the spring is enjoying the daffodils, tulips, and hellebores. But it’s not. I guess it’s time to buy a new pair of gardening gloves... Besides a new gardening catalogue came and there’s a gorgeous hardy orchid. And the daffs have buds. And the hyacinths are up. I love spring.

Diversity

My daughter is a junior in college. (She’s in class right now and won’t read this blog post until later. So if you come back in a couple of hours and this post is radically different, you’ll know she said, “Hey, you can’t say that!”) Anyway, more to the point, she has only a few units left until her major, mathematics, is completed. But she still had quite a few units she needed in order to graduate. So she decided that instead of taking random classes, she’d add a second minor. One in computer science. It’s been an eye-opener for her. Let’s just say...computer science majors are different than math majors. (Though Ariel says that the personal hygiene issues are about the same.)

When Ariel goes to a computer science class, she doesn’t have to open a door. Some young man rushes to open it for her. You see, at this university there are almost no girls in computer science. The other day some guy asked her out, before he knew her name. If there is another girl in the class, she skips across the room and introduces herself to Ariel.

She’s even had a professor say, “Look, we have a girl in our class. Diversity!” Being that Ariel is quiet, this is an experience for her. In math, names are all ill-understood social niceties. If the professor knows your name, it usually means that you’ve been at his office hours three times a week for the entire semester. In comp sci, they listen attentively to make sure they master the enunciation of Ariel’s name properly. This is especially important in the South where, for reasons unknown to me, they miss the final “L” in her name and call her Aria. (Or maybe we bite off the end with our clipped New England pronunciations.)

Anyway, now that she’s a comp sci minor, I’m really glad she’s got her mace—she can fend off those hordes of girl-deprived computer geeks.