Thanks Sweet Lou

From 1969 to 1973 Lou Piniella played for the Kansas City Royals, the very years that I learned to love baseball. Either on the front porch, sitting with my great grandmother in her big red chair, or on the ottoman at my grandfather's feet, I spent hours listening to games on the old transistor radio. So long ago did this love begin that I remember falling, and suffering scraped knees, in the gravel of the parking lot at the old Municipal Stadium, torn down years ago after the Royals moved to their current home, Kaufman Stadium. Lou played almost his entire tenure at Municipal Stadium, where, I suspect, he occasionally rewarded himself for a game well played with a brown paper package of burnt ends from Arthur Bryant's, only blocks away.

Lou was my very favorite baseball player, the one whose name I always listened for crackling out of the old radio. In Denny Matthews' so familiar baseball voice, "Piniella with a line drive to second" sent me bouncing, arms outstretched, straight into my grandfather's lap. Clearly the choice of Piniella, rhymes with vanilla, was not a random pick; when Lou defected to the rival Yankees in 1973 I chose Cookie Rojas as my new favorite Royal. Baseball, as influenced by baking, made perfect sense to a six year old.

Four years ago when the Cubs chose Lou as their new manager I was elated. Now in Chicago, Piniella Vanilla and I would be reunited. Two good years, two dismal years, but I loved watching him storm onto the field, red faced and furious, sometimes appearing confused post game, it was good to be back together again. Baseball is not a business to me, it's history and people and sport. And it's this attitude, as I understand, that will keep the Cubs from ringing and offering me Lou's job. Which is just fine, we've had a good run, Lou and I, and I wish him well. Thanks for the wonderful memories, of both then and now, Mr. Piniella.

Maybe Cookie Rojas is available?

Life's Illusions

Hot, Summer 2010

Commander in Briefs

Mary: When I grow up I'm going to be President.
Me: Of course.
Mary: I'm going to make a law that says people only have to wear underwear.
Me: Only underwear?
Kate: Mary, the President doesn't make laws, the senators do.

Of course.

Criit'r Gitt'r Jack

I never knew Pre Internet Jack. In our life together he has always had ready access to information, in fact much of our odd courtship was spent, office to office via speakerphone, his manic surfing from place to place while I struggled to understand why Mr. Kurtz's sweep account was not funding correctly. Interesting way to get to know someone, privy to their after hours Internet search, or at least what was shared from our respective desks.

My husband will drive the same car for 20 years. He uses the bank supplied, and not at all current, Blackberry, does not own an iPod and has just recently, because of space issues, bought a flat screen television. His need for immediate gratification manifests itself in frustration at not being able to see the exact menu of the restaurant suggested by his mother for an anniversary celebration, next year, in a small town near the small town where she lives. This sort of incompetence, on the part of the small restaurant, drives him crazy.

Thankfully there are roughly the same number websites devoted to bed bug removal as there are bed bugs in the world, but not in our apartment.

Critt'r Gitt'r Jack turned to his weapon of choice and set about arming himself with information. My two days of extermination were deemed insufficient.The children were moved again, the beds disassembled, the Senator and the President removed to a safe location. I called Orkin.

It's a truly laborious and horrible process. Every single piece of clothing must be removed, bagged and sealed, and then laundered. Mattresses are dragged outside, examined and then coated with toxic fluids meant to kill anything living within. The infested room is cleaned, sprayed, boiled, and inspected. We found nothing, not one trace of bed bug. We moved to our room, clothing bagged, mattresses removed, room scrubbed, not one bug found, or one bug case, or one bug remains.

By day three Jack, now a regular in bed bug chat rooms around the Internet, was exhausted and mentally bug worn; he turned to the experts to explain our bug confusion. Late at night he logged on; true bug hunters are nocturnal, like their prey. Keep your bleary eyes open they urged, you'll find them, they're hiding. We found nothing.

Some suggested we hire a bed bug sniffing dog. While not a professionally trained bugger, but yet, a beagle with a keen sniffer, we turned to Eleanor Roosevelt. Not interested, and tired of being displaced, she opted for a nap.

Project Bug Removal is complete; the beds reassembled, the clothes returned to their clean drawers. Jack, now a para-exterminator, feels we were misdiagnosed. To think I spent years thinking bedbugs were just part of that charming childhood bedtime rhyme, "don't let the bedbugs bite", never to be uttered in our home again.

The Eagle and the Beagle

I am the eagle, I live in high country

In rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky

John Denver

I am the beagle, I live in the country

In chasing the seagulls that race to the sky

Mary

Life's Illusions

Summer 2006

Building A Summer

Mary and Kate are playing Famous Architects. It's a new game, surely borne out of recently spending four days in Michigan with four architects. They've got a wine box, tons of construction paper, a soon to be depleted glue stick, colored pencils and Velcro hair rollers, dug out from the depths of the bathroom cabinet. A city is rising before me on the carpet outside their playroom.

It's a necessary reminder, that some of the best days are spent playing at home with supplies on hand. In these last few weeks before school begins, I am hurriedly checking items off my summer to do list. Yesterday morning was spent at the History Museum where we explored freedom in Chicago, wedding traditions, Chinatown and Chicago hot dog making. Monday we were at a water playground trying to escape the mad Midwestern heat. Tomorrow there is a program at the local library, Friday we've got plans to go to the beach.

As adamant as I am about lazy summers, I panic when I realize that lazy summers, on our current schedule, are only about 10 weeks long, and we've got less than four weeks to go before autumn hits and school begins. There are still things on my list to cross off: The Children's Museum, open symphony rehearsals, baseball, miniature golf, napping. We'll never get it all in, we never do. And knowing there are only 11 more summers before summer becomes simply a season characterized by heat and humidity, not a wonderful respite from school and schedules and alarm clocks, provides me little comfort.

The talk on the playground at the end of the school year was summer camp. I politely abstained. Summer camp when I was a kid meant packing your bags and heading off to Colorado or Minnesota for three weeks, not a daily 9:00 am excursion to the park, or nature center, or art museum. Too much like school, to scheduled, too much of what I wanted summer not to be, I passed on summer camp, realizing that in choosing not to work, I have chosen to spend my days with the girls, accepting the periodic insanity directly related to that decision.


Maybe sanity is overrated. Maybe I only have, relatively speaking, a short time to spend my Friday afternoons at the beach with two small but rapidly growing beach bums. Sand castles one day, wine bottle box cities the next, lazy summer afternoons building cities and memories, just what I really want to cross off that to do list.

Yes, They Are All Mine

They were crawling the walls, almost, but not quite, literally. And arguing, which is now their normal means of communication, constant bickering pausing only long enough to make a disgusted face at the other which sends them into riotous laughter, and then they are right back at it.

The woman behind the counter looked at me, "are they yours?", as she gestured in their general direction, like people at the dog beach wave towards Eleanor. Not at all a "oh they're so cute, are they yours?" wave, but one of trepidation and maybe, horror.

Exhausted I proudly said yes, and then asked them to remove their small sticky noses from the glass display cabinet.

She had her God children last week, two of them, four and six, for five days. Her patience was shot, her fuse was short, she felt bad for the coworkers left to deal with her, she could not imagine how any sane person could manage one child, much less two. She was tired.

It is different when they are your own, not that they don't wear you down just as much, maybe even a bit more, but you are wholly vested in the end result, and there is some salvation in that. Even late in the day, when they have just knocked an entire row of bread off the table at the farmer's market, when they are soaked with rain water, not at all clean and deeply engaged in a heated battle over the correct lyrics to "Yes We Have No Bananas". Even then they are all mine.

But deep love for the children aside, where are these Godparents that take children for five days?

Life's Illusions

Summer 2010

Golf Lessons

"Bedbugs?".

"Everyone in the neighborhood has them, we can't keep this stuff on the shelf, you're lucky to get a bottle".

Lucky? Not exactly the word I would chose. Mary woke up with red nibbles all over one side of her face, and here we were, receiving a diagnosis from our friendly ACE hardware man. I stocked up on all varieties of horrid looking things to squirt around my children's currently pesticide free, but apparently bug welcoming, bedroom.

The day before, two days after returning from a wonderful 10 day beach vacation, Jack was gone again, back to Michigan for his annual golf trip. They go every year, 8 of them, for four days of non stop golf with little time for frivolous late night activities, I am assured. We didn't do so well on the timing, there were still piles of sand in the kitchen. A large bag of beach toys remained in the back of the car, freshly laundered clothes were piled high on the dining room table, heaps of dirty clothes scattered on the laundry room floor, canvas bags of every size and color stood from one end of the hallway to the other and two thoroughly exhausted children, ones who have never returned well rested and fresh, were left to appear every morning intent on destroying any patience I had left to share. And now, bedbugs.

Beds were stripped, linens washed, scary killer bug stuff squirted in every corner of the room. While away, my daughter's charming bedroom was magically transformed into a creepy fleabag motel, I was determined to get it back. Mary and Kate slept for two nights in sleeping bags, a camping getaway when you are five, not an escape from the $20 per hour motel room of my mind.

The night before he left one, of two, bathrooms decided to take a holiday as well. Not a terrible problem, until the remaining bath, feeling the pressure, called it quits the next day.

Eleanor Roosevelt, sensing my growing frustration with the situation, and missing Jack terribly, decided to relieve her sense of abandonment by relieving herself on the runner in the living room. One of the children, clearly not wanting to leave Eleanor alone in this embarrassing situation, decided to go with the flow and, for the first time ever, announce "Mom! I went in my pants".

The lights in the exterior hallway went out, leaving us in complete darkness at night, and me terrified to take the dog out. The lock on the front door broke. The children, trying to help, sprinkled pet cleaning powder on every exposed surface, effectively removing any odor left behind by Eleanor, and allowing me to imagine, for three days, what it would be like to live in the laundry supply aisle at Target.

Our Internet connection flickered on and off the entire weekend, because, when left alone for four days with two young children, it's best to have intermittent communication options available. I found the window to email Jack, "bedbugs".

Golf lessons are on my to do list for 2011.