Hot Wings and Crunchy Leaves

It's hard to blog over the noise of two grown men consuming 1 million chicken wings. I smell the heat. They sound delicious, and they are giggling like a group of tween girls at a slumber party. Mark has a display of demeated bones on a paper towel before him. It's hideous. He's thrilled with himself. After all, he's in training. Two marathons in two weeks, beginning this Saturday in Baton Rogue. But more on that another time.

Our buds are heading back home tomorrow. We will miss them terribly. Especially the kids. Built-in, 24/7 buds, it doesn't get any better than that. For all of us.

Now they're breaking into the ice cream, which means I need to wrap this up.

Much of the weekend was spent frolicking in the leaves.


Surveying the giant pile being prepared for jumping.

Thomas the train and Stella crashed into the leaves.

Getting ready to crash Thomas and herself into the leaves.

That's some high-stepping.

Pure elation.

ManDate

It's 10:06pm and Mark still isn't home from his date. The minutes are slowly ticking by and I am starting to wonder where on earth they are. I'm not worried. They are bringing home the ice cream. Apparently after two days of round-the-clock eating there is still room for ice cream.

My SC BFF is in town for the weekend. Her husband and Mark have quite the bromance. Mark was tickled pink when he discovered he'd been gifted with some Bobcats box seat tickets and was going to be able to share them with someone who has a shared affinity for shrimp cocktail, wings and blue cheese dressing, and buffets of assorted meats and more meats. The game and the fact that the hometeam is a miserable 5-10 barely mattered. You had me at chicken wings.

The ladies (and one gentleboy) held down the fort while the men went off to enjoy manly mantime things. We opted to eat take-out Welcome to Moe's! then were treated to a lovely concert of rockin' piano playing and singing about rock stars and cowboys and yeah-yeah-yeahs!

No worries, though. The moms will get their evening out tomorrow. Whatever will we do?

Redrum, Redrum

Heath's doppelganger is a boy born in 1973 who happened to play one of the creepiest kids in scary flicks history.

Friday evening, while we were on the hunt for Redbox movies and ice cream, a very sweet teenaged clerk at the HT told us that our son looks just like that kid from The Shining. This isn't the first time we've been told this. Or the second, or third. But it is the first time someone has told us this and offered up a very interesting Halloween costume suggestion. And not just for Heath, but the whole family. She even thought Stella could pass for one of the twin girls standing in the hallway. It's a great idea. Too bad it's mid-November.

Heath is incredibly sensitive to smells, light, sounds, textures of clothes and food, motion, other people's moods...but psychic abilities? Might as well.

Beanky Roadkill

The preschool bake sale is tomorrow and I'm pretty sure I don't ever want to see another Pumpkin Bread loaf for as long as I live. Well, at least after the sale, and after the sweet smell of nutmeg and cloves and ginger and sugar sugar sugar leave the house. When Heath woke up from his nap yesterday, he instantly complained, the house is too smelly. Sweet cakes--he leaves them more than he takes them.

Speaking of Sweet Cakes, I've been far too neglectful in recording my little Heath and Stella ditties these days, and there have been quite a few. It seems my mind is mostly fixated on stopping the madness of sibling playfulness that always goes too far. On a positive note, they really do enjoy each other. And then they don't. Their games of tag, no matter how often I state the rules (Don't push. Don't scream. Don't sit on each other's heads when you ignore the don't push rule), I still find them collapsed in a pile of raucous laughter that is deafening and always ends in...you guessed it...crying.

But it isn't all refereeing. I am currently at a loss for conjuring up a moment of sweet bonded bliss, because I am tired and our bedroom smells like a giant Thanksgiving muffin brownie pound cake with peanut butter vanilla glaze, and it has penetrated my brain like a hyperglycemic brain fog. I really just wanted to tell a Stella Beanky tale.

Stella's and Beanky's bond continues to grow. Where there is Beanky, there is Stella. And where's there's a Stella, there'd better be a Beanky. Or else. As I have blogged before, washing Beanky can be tricky. It is a covert operation, because if she should spot the green blanket just before it is tossed in the washer, I better be prepared for two things. 1) Relentless crying that will not cease until Beanky is back where it rightfully belongs--wrapped around Stella's neck. Or 2) Letting go of the idea that Beanky is going to be washed at that time and giving it back to Stella, no matter how much marinara sauce or blue paint or milk or mud or marker or juice is on it.

After dropping Heath off at school on Wednesday, I decided I would make use of the one child time and head to Trader Joe's. Once again, we were mid-week and out of most every food in the house. As I waited at a No Right on Red light, I heard the sound of Stella's window open--a trick her big brother taught her just two days earlier. The light turned green and I turned right, blinded by a scream of horror coming from the back of the car.

My first thought, Oh no, she's rolled the window up and crushed her little fingers and ripped one off! But through the screams and tears of terror, I understood one word: Beanky. I immediately turned into the first parking lot entrance, parked the car, and spun around. Sure enough. The tears were about Beanky. And Beanky was nowhere to be found.

Then I recognized another word: window. Then another: throw. Well, 'fro, to be exact.

Did you throw Beanky out of the window? I asked.

Beanky 'frowed da window, she pitifully howled.

I parked the car in a spot closest to a grassy knoll beside the busy intersection. I jumped out of the car, fought my way through a nasty hedge of prickly bushes, quickly spotting Beanky lying helpless in the road. Fortunately I arrived at a moment of light traffic, so my wait to retrieve the lovey was minimal. I grabbed the lifeless body from the street and rushed back to a still hysterical Stella.

That is until she spotted Beanky in my hand. I opened her door and placed the soft sage fleece in her lap.

That's when I saw it. Beanky was smothered in tire tracks and dirt. She'd been runover. According to the wheel prints, not once, but twice.

Stella rubbed her little finger over the embedded grooves, flicking at the debris. Oh no! she cried. Beanky doi-ty! And she buried her face in her dear friend's fabric.

Beanky didn't leave Stella's side while we did our grocery shopping or on the ride home. But later, while she was eating lunch, she said, Beanky 'frowed da window. Beanky doi-ty. Wash Beanky, mommy. And for the first time ever, she handed over the blanket, still covered in dirt and fabric wounds.

Overmountain Victory Trail Revolutionary Run 25K

There's something about a weekend without a trail race, or trail run for that matter, that pales in comparison to last weekend. While I look forward to the preschool bake sale and all its preparation for Saturday and Sunday, knowing I won't be heading to the Whitewater Center for some running in the woods makes me feel a bit glum.

Last Friday, I wasn't the least bit glum. Trail Pal and I headed to back to the mountain cabin for a Saturday morning 25K at W. Kerr Scott Dam & Reservoir Visitor Center in Wilkesboro. It was around 6:30pm when we arrived in the foothills of the NC mountains, but we decided to do a quick race site drive-by. In the dark, we could hardly tell what we were in for, but we had a good idea of where we would be heading early in the morning. Getting lost, or sidetracked, on our way was not going to happen.

We made a quick pit stop at the Lowe's grocery store, the last possible place to pick up anything we might need. With much of the parkway closed and its amenities shut-down for the winter, it truly is the last place to stop before winding our way up the mountain to the cabin. We got the essentials. Pasta, sauce, salad, muffins, and ice cream. A pint per person is most necessary for pre-race eating.

We carbed and ice creamed up, then headed to bed. Actually, let me back up here a minute.

The cabin. Since our last race visit a few things had been added. A fully usable potty. Running water for the sinks. And a family of small critters. At some point during our pasta dinner a tiny mouse scampered his way from one side of the kitchen to the other, then hunkered its body down to slide under the stove. I had my back to the open area, so I missed the whole episode, but I felt its creepy wake for the rest of the evening.

Including when I went into my room to bed down for the night. As I tried to enjoy a quiet moment of reading How to Generate Values in Young Children by Sue Riley, I was interrupted by a more than faint scritch scritch scritch on the closet door. At first I tried to imagine it was simply a tiny mouse, more frightened of me than I could be of him, no worries. Then I thought about his entire family living in the closet, so very hungry from the lack of food as cold weather had officially rested upon the area. Then I thought of the mouse family, so very hungry, and so very angry that they have been disturbed, and they were fervently trying to claw their way out of the closet. To get me. I couldn't seem to shake the idea that I was going to be awakened in the middle of the night by a pack of wild-eyed mice on my face.

So I moved to the couch.

Before I knew it, alarms were chiming and it was time to get ready. I ate my Grape-Nuts, drank a reasonable amount of coffee, and dressed in my colorful layers of hodgepodge running gear. The temperature in the car read 26 (snowflake light clearly lit). I believed it. It was C.O.L.D. Too cold to belabor the point that I was a bit out of whack, bodily, from having slept like a coiled snake on one end of the sofa. So cold in fact, picking up the race packet and having a brief wait before start is a bit of a blur. I remember the porta-potty. I remember thinking, man, I can't stand using a porta-potty. But not a lot of other facts were committed to memory. Too cold to create a new brain wrinkle, I suppose.

Except one particular moment. About a minute before the race started, the Race Director mentioned the trickiness of measuring a trail. Our 15.625 miles is actually 17.25. Miles. I'd pretty well wrapped my head and body around 15ish miles, but 17.25. I thought, well, I have a choice here. I can obsess over not being prepared for 17ish, or I can run along and know that 17 is 26.2 preparation. (Not that I'm preparing for that.)

And then it was time to go. And I forgot about the surprise additional miles. And I ran. And I do mean, ran. I was pleased with my speed. Pleased with how well I felt. Pleased with the invigorating chilly air. Pleased with having trained on a comparable trail. Pleased with the woodsie smells and the fallen leaves smattering the trails. Up and down they rolled. Before I knew it, the 10Kers broke off, and I kept running. And then it happened.

Somewhere around 9 or 10 miles, there was a turn around spot to head back on the same trail. At this point I tried to open my Clif Bloks. My fingers, gloved the entire time, were still so cold, I could barely get a grip on the package. After far too many moments of struggling, I finally got it open. I also decided to add to my frustration by trying to remove my top layer--a zipped jacket. My hands, still paralyzed by the cold, fumbled with the zipper. By the time I got it off, I decided I was now sweating and cold, so I wanted it back on.

As much as I tried to pick my pace back up, it seemed my momentum and sheer drive from exhilaration was not coming back. Heading on the same trail I had blazed through going the opposite direction, seemed harder to run, and harder to find a rhythmic steady click. So I ran in quick bursts, then slow-running trudgery. Speed bursts, beat-down trotting. Back and forth, up and down.

Finally, like music to my ears, I heard the sounds of cheering. The trails were not marked, so there were no mileage signs, no white flags to indicate go this way. So I have little comprehension of where I was or when I was there. But I heard the voices and figured we were within 2 miles of the end.

We were. And then the trail snaked back into the woods for another three miles. The sounds of cheering, fading fast. At the last aid station they said we were two miles to the finish. I don't think they were telling us the truth.

And at this point, there was an us. Me. The guy with the iPod (don't know that it was an iPod--we'll just call it that. What I do know is it was music, and it was loud.) in front of me. And the guy in the orange jacket behind me. I was desperate to pass the iPod guy. At every burst of energy I would work very hard to get around him, and he worked very hard on not letting me.

I don't remember when it happened, but it finally did. Orange jacket and I got around iPod, and I started to recognize the area. We were about a mile from the finish. And then it really happened. I tripped on a root. It was a trip that 2 miles into the race you have all your faculties and balance. At 16 miles, I had nothing. So I tripped, thinking, Uh-oh, I'm tripping. Uh-oh, I'm falling. I landed on both knees and both palms, and just as quickly as I fell, I got back up again. And within a few feet, it happened. Again. Root. Trip. Uh-oh. I'm falling. Orange jacket helped me up and said, There's no way I'm passing you, go!

So I went. Just before I emerged from the woods, Trail Pal came running along. Having had a super-speedy run (and placing 4th overall!), she was finished. She took the picture of me above. So glad I still felt like smiling. I think I smiled all the way to the finish.

And every time I've thought about it since, I can't help but grin.

17.25 miles in 3:16:21.9.

Rainbowlicious

Heath decided 5:45am is a nice wake-up time this morning. It's been a while since that's happened, so I can't complain. Not too much, anyway.

Trail Pal and I are off for the mountains this afternoon. A 24 hour mommy getaway. Funny how our break includes a 25K trail race. Crazy, funny, isn't it all the same?

My race gear is packed and I am ready for a chilly start--30ish degrees, and a reasonable finish--50ish. The only rhyme and reason to the outfit is function; fashion continues to escape me. Basically, the picture above is a nice representation of what I will look like traipsing down the Wilkesboro trails. Minus the ponytail, of course.

I do, however, plan to toss colorful stars of happy running well wishes to all my passersby.

On your left!

I Do Not Vant to Suck Your Garlic Blood

In just a couple of days my Trail Pal and I will be heading up to run the Overmountain Trail 25K on Saturday. I am still feeling relatively ready. My plan has been to keep my runs this week in the 4 mile range, be driven batty by my children, and eat carbs like a piggy piggy. This strategy should leave me ready to explode at the seams, and will translate into some happy, and hopefully, not so very slow running through the woods of North Wilkesboro.

Too bad I got this silly cold that's been lingering for about three weeks. Actually, ten days ago I recollect being able to breathe and not cough for about 12 hours, so my guess is it's actually been not one, but two colds that have been keeping me from feeling my absolute best. So when I was given an interesting tip--eat loads of roasted garlic--I ate it.

While I was drizzling the garlic bulbs with olive oil and folding them up in tinfoil for baking in the oven, Heath wanted to know what I was doing and why I was doing it. I explained that it would help my cold, and then I added a little helpful tidbit about keeping vampires away as well.

He watched the process of folding the bulbs and placing them in the oven, while mulling over the vampire idea. After a heavy sigh, and with much relief, he announced, I think I better have some of that, too. I got this yucky cough, and those dag-gone vampires get in my bed at night.

Filling in the Title Space

After a lovely evening out with Mark, my brother (visiting from CA), no children, and a delicious plate of sushi and tofu, we made a quick on-the-way-home pit-stop at Harris-Teeter. We needed milk, as usual, and to return a Redbox movie before it became a five dollar rental.

Christmas wreaths have been hung by the HT logo with care. Rows of glittery, plastic tree bulbs and HoHoHo mugs and red stockings are piled on shelves at the front of the store. And I think, I think, I saw packages of red and green M&Ms.

I am not ready.

The Overmountain Trail 25K is in 6 days. Trail pal and I will be heading for the mountains in 5 days. We hit the trails at the Whitewater Center this morning for a brisk 12ish miles. My car said it was 36 degrees with a snowflake icon, in case I missed the point that 36 means cold. But that was just fine by me and my legs. I had unearthed an excellent pair of Adidas running tights from Mark's trusty running garb drawer. They're slick. They're shiny. They're warm. Perfect for chilly mountain running.

I am ready.

It's Not Really Fire, It's a Fruit Roll-Up

A fire-breathing dragon cake...

...for one very special birthday boy.

At various times throughout the day, Heath has said, I'm four. I was three, and now I'm four. Sometimes he would hold up three fingers, then four. Sometimes he would count to four. And everytime, he said it with an air of amazement, like it's even shocking to him that he could possibly be so very old.

I know the feeling. I still can't believe it.

But I can celebrate it. And celebrate it, we did. All day long.

He has been anticipating this day for weeks now. And he had three requests for this special deal. 1) A party with his friends. 2) A party with basketball playing and a bouncy house. And 3) A Dragon Cake. A red, wait, no, orange. No, blue. No, no, yellow. No, orange. No, red. No, orange dragon cake. Made with Tootsie Rolls and Hummus.

I am all about accommodating as many requests as possible for my children, within reason, of course. But a hummus cake? Hmmm...that's going in the unreasonable pile.

We managed everything else, though. So after a morning of Heath inquiring how much longer until we go to my party, we went, and we gathered with his friends and family. Basketball was played. A house was bounced in. A little bowling ball was tossed into some easy, free-flying pins. And a dragon cake--orange, no hummus (at least not in the cake), with a tootsie roll nose--was happily consumed.

When his sweet, little friends departed, and we were heading to the car, a beaming Heath proclaimed, That was a GREAT party.

I am so glad my sweet boy thought so. My sweet boy who was three, but is now four years old.

That's going to take some getting used to.

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

I was the den mother for Heath's class today. The cooking volunteer, to be exact. We made Yogurt Parfaits. Heath misunderstood me when we were heading out the door this morning and thought I said, Carfaits. Needless to say, he was a bit bummed that layering vanilla yogurt, granola, blueberries, and strawberries did not include a single car. I suppose he thought we would dump out all the yummies and run Matchbox cars through it.

But we didn't. While he didn't pay much attention to the yogurt delight while we were in the classroom, he did, however, have his interest peaked on the ride home. He managed to inhale what was left of the blueberries, straight out of the bag, leaving his face tinged blue, looking very much like Willy Wonka's Violet Beauregard.

I got invited into the Boy's Only Club while I was in class. Because Heath is your brother, the little guys explained.

What do the boys do in the club? I inquired.

They drink wine and watch football.

You're Everything a Big, Bad Wolf Could Want...

My mom emailed me this picture tonight. I don't know why it strikes me as shocking that it's Heath. I keep obsessively staring at it. He was, I think, 11 months old. He was walking, but not steadily. There was no Stella. Not even pregnant with Stella at that point. I think it stuns me how much a child grows in such a short amount of time. Three years pass by, and next thing you know...



...you've got this guy, who clearly needs more candy.

Being Spider-Man for 48 hours isn't for the faint of heart. As a matter of fact, it left poor Heath feeling a little puny. He woke up early this morning, complaining about being too tired, and coughing, and not wanting to go to school. I thought staying home to rest would be helpful.

And it would be. If he would rest. Instead, he was just under the weather enough to be irritable and agitated and cranky, but well enough to do everything he could do to drive Stella zany. (Before anyone says, Poor Stella, let's remember she is becoming the master of her own Heath Goat Getting Skills. And get his goat, she does.) Most of my day was spent keeping them off of each other. And repeating, Please stop that. Please don't rip that. Please get off your sister's neck. Please stop tapping your foot on Heath. Please give that back to (insert child's name here). No, you can't have anymore candy.

Just when I was thinking we would boycott Halloween next year, Heath informed me he already knows what he wants to be. Little Red Riding Hood.

I wouldn't mind seeing that.