Home on the Range

My sister and my nephew were in town for an all-too brief visit over the weekend. Last time I saw Joey in person, it was over Christmas break, and he looks almost like a different person now. Not a baby any more, but a toddler. A tiny little blonde-headed flyaway-haired Godzilla in Stride Rites.

And of course he is a perfectly normal-sized kid, but Shae looks like a total GIANT next to him. With all the delicacy and finesse of a drunken brontosaurus.

I feel like I haven't slept in a week. Chasing after two little kids, one of whom fancies herself a little ringleader, is difficult work. Especially without a cocktail or eleventeen.

Have to admit: I don't remember my kid ever being this little. I'm sure she was, at one point, but I don't remember it. How long ago was it? Two hundred years or something? Who gave her permission to outgrow the baby swing? Stop growing, you damn kids! And get off my lawn!

I am telling you -- that bench in my grandparents' backyard has been entertaining literally generations of my family. And several thousand geese, I think.

You can't see Joey's socks very well but they're Princeton socks, with little tiger paws all over them. They're adorable.

NOT ADORABLE, G. Not cool.

Sakura

On Tuesday, on my way home from work, I stopped at the park up the road from my house to do some "location scouting" -- it had been a while since we took pictures somewhere different, and it had been hot for a few days, and I thought running around down by the creek could be fun.

The Japanese cherry trees were in full bloom that day. Full, gorgeous, fragrant bloom. I don't know if I've ever smelled so many cherry blossoms (sakura, or 桜) at once before. It was heavenly. Better than pie. The only place I can remember that smelled as good was Sounion, in Greece, the first time I ever saw the Mediterranean Sea.

I am a sucker for flowering fruit trees. They're my kryptonite. Spring is normally a cacophony of sneezes, wheezes, and honking into tissues. The prettier the flower, the deadlier the pollen. But I love 'em anyway, and there are times in the car when I feel like I need to stop and pull over to take pictures of random weeping cherry trees in some stranger's front yard.

These cherry trees are around a memorial, an All-Veterans Walk of Honor, for local servicemen and servicewomen and Blue Star Mothers. I am not a particularly military-minded individual, but I sure think it's a beautiful place.

Here's something you'll almost never hear me say about anyplace else in this town: it's very serene and lovely at the memorial, with the sound of the creek, and the kiss of the wind, and the smell of the blossoms. I don't know anybody who is remembered here, but my heart still caught in my chest a little.

I must have been there on the very peak day for the trees, because ever since then, they've been looking less and less fluffy and more and more "mangy," as flowering fruit trees do when they lose their blossoms.

Lucky me, getting to be there on the absolute best possible day. Moments that I get to spend with myself are so rare any more.

I think that next year we might have to plan a road trip to D.C. for the Cherry Blossom Festival, or maybe we'll try to make it to the one in Philly instead. I'll take a real camera for those.

Easter 2010: Part Two

Almost as exciting as "Leonard: Part Six" -- and away we go!

Egg hunts look pretty much the same everywhere -- this one, on my Dad's side of the family, is just bigger and louder than most others (because I have relatives numbering in the hundreds at this point). Lots of little kids, lots of middle kids, lots of bigger kids. And, of course, the annual Keg Hunt, which is where the legal-drinking-age grandchildren wander around looking for little bottles with their names on them. It's fun. Usually.

Anyway, what I want to focus on this time is how, as the day goes on, Shae gets closer and closer to the Easter Bunny. Perhaps we are getting over our leporiphagophobia*.

Very close to the Easter Bunny. Not quite touching. Looking away, ready to escape, but still in a reasonable proximity.

Allow the Easter Bunny to touch her OMG OMG ZOMFG! You can tell that she is nervous about this, and I can't rightly say I blame her, because this particular Bunny is just on this side of Donnie-Darko-looking.

Standing right next to him, and -- wait, what is that I see when I zoom in?

HOLDING THE EASTER BUNNY'S HAND. Success! Maybe by Christmas she'll get over her whole Santa-is-creepy thing.

* = fake made up word that is supposed to mean "fear of getting eaten by rabbits."

Easter 2010: Part One

So. Easter, my arch-nemesis. We meet again.

I love Easter, of course, because it's one of the few times a year when people don't look at you funny when they catch you eating nothing but jellybeans and chocolate marshmallow bunny heads for lunch. But it's exhausting. I feel like we've been doing these Easter festivities for weeks already.

If you are keeping score at home, her Easter loot from "the bunny" included a bathing suit, a T-shirt, monkey pajamas, two packs of stickers, a pair of sunglasses, some cheap pearl jewelry that is already broken and/or missing, bubbles, jellybeans, yellow M&M's, about two dollars in change, and this light thing that just spins and hums and is absolutely mesmerizing. Best buck-fifty I ever spent this week. When you add in all the swag from the grandparents, I estimate that she got about 8,000 pounds of crap. Not bad!

The third and hopefully final birthday cake. This one is your ever-popular DQ ice cream cake. Yay chocolate crunchies! There might still be some of this left in Aunt Kathy's freezer, and if there is we'll have that with my sister and nephew when they come in to visit. I am NOT getting another whole cake. Can't we do something different, like birthday pudding or something? I am running out of pants.

My cousin Jason was in from Florida for the weekend, and apparently he was on egg-hiding duty. He did an excellent job, photographically speaking. The over-processed egg picture from yesterday was also hidden in Aunt Kathy's yard. Not that you asked, but I chose this particular picture because I sort of dig forsythias, even though they're just there. They're so ... yellow and happy.

This outfit is from last year. I love it. But I remember when these were, you know, regular-length pants. She's grown like 6 inches since last year, but she hasn't gained much weight, and now she's out of diapers, so last year's 3T's still fit. Except, they look like completely different clothes, don't they? Also: it's been like 80+ degrees for a week and this shit can stop any time because I hate sweat, and my feet are not anywhere close to sandal-ready.

Counting the money with Uncle Quack. You know, now that I think about it, I have no idea how much money we actually got. It's all going into her piggy bank, but still. I wonder if we even opened all the eggs yet? I need to double-check when I get home.

This is Jason, who hid the eggs. He had almost as much fun playing with Shae's toys as Shae did. And it's worth a mention that he's going on the family camping trip later. So maybe, just maybe, camping might be fun -- or at least tolerable.

Tomorrow: The other side of the family!

Farewell to an Arm (and a Heart and a Soul)

NOTE: The rest of this is about football, and it contains swear words. Mostly "asshole." You might want to skip this one and come back tomorrow, when I put up Easter pictures. I mean, you can read this if you want, but it's probably going to get me disowned. AGAIN. Why don't you just look at the fancy special effects on this picture and try again later?

Okay, don't say I didn't warn you ... proceed at your own risk. IF YOU DARE.

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I am now a fan without a team. This has been a long time coming. And yet, my heart breaks to do it.

On Easter Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles traded away Donovan McNabb to the Washington Redskins -- a division rival! -- for two draft picks, one in 2010 and another next year. Two "maybes" for a definite.

Assholes.

For most of my life, I have been an Eagles fan. Sure, in high school and college I "experimented" a little, and had a brief fling with the Buffalo Bills, my poor beleaguered Buffalo Bills, who will always hold a special place in my heart. But my first true love has always been the Eagles.

It is true that I have not always loved everything about the team. I think that Ron Jaworski is a grade-A douchenozzle. I never really liked Randall Cunningham or Rodney Peete or Buddy Ryan or Rich Kotite. I want to forget Fred-Ex. I don't even remember Ray Rhodes.

Perhaps I have only blocked out the most unpleasant things, though, because I remember Harold Charmichael, and the "Gang Green" defense, and Dick Vermeil before he became a smarmy Blue Cross pitchman, and Andre Waters, and Reggie White. These names still give me a tingle.

When McNabb got drafted by the Eagles in 1999, I was not one of those people who booed. I am willing to bet that this was in large part because he was an Orangeman, like me. Fellow alums always get the benefit of the doubt, right? But I remember thinking: "This is a ... weird choice. I hope these guys know what they're doing. I want to believe."

I suppose it goes without saying that I was big into "The X-Files" at that point. Stranger things had happened.

And boy, did they ... in 8 of McNabb's 11 seasons in Philadelphia, the Eagles made the post-season. Five times, they played for the NFC Championship. One trip to the Super Bowl. Multiple Pro Bowls. 3rd highest win percentage of active QB's in the NFL, behind only the almighty Tom Brady and the almightier Peyton Manning. 4th-and-26! Fourth and goddamn twenty-six.

McNabb has never been anything other than a class act and a true gentleman while he was in Philadelphia. He married his college sweetheart. They have four kids together. He is not one of those "dudes" who hangs around strip clubs or drives around with guns in his car or gets snagged in the airport with 500 lbs. of cocaine in his suitcase. He appeared in soup commercials with his parents. His parents, y'all. You cannot possibly be more clean-cut than that.

But there are so many Eagles fans who say that, because they never got the Super Bowl ring they feel they "deserved," McNabb was a bum. Worthless. Good for nothing. A loser. A choker. A talentless hack. A fraud. All those other things, measurable and unmeasurable, that made him one of the best players in the NFL -- none of them appear to matter. The fact that he's been beaten and bruised and broken, hammered and heckled and hollered at, kept on coming back for more, and never had a negative word to say about anybody, ever -- those intangibles mean "nothing" because they came without a championship.

Hey, guess what? It took John Elway four tries and FIFTEEN YEARS to win a Super Bowl -- he eventually won two of them. And Dan Marino NEVER won a Super Bowl. Are they a couple of useless bums too?

Well, then, I quit this bitch. I don't want to be associated with people who seriously believe that winning isn't everything, but the ONLY thing. Because they? Are assholes. The lot of them.

Santa-booing, battery-throwing ASSHOLES.

I still love the Eagles, and I'll probably watch them all season from behind splayed fingers, but I will always and forever hate Eagles fans, even as I am one of them. And I hope they get exactly what they "deserve" this year: a Super Bowl. For Donovan. In Washington.

Assholes.