My So Called Life

Evie’s First Race

/ Shane / 3 Comments

In what has become an annual event, Sara once again ran the Comer Classic 5k conveniently located in our neighborhood. However, this year there was an additional participant in the kid’s portion of the race.

We were really prepared for the worst, since the weather called for thunderstorms all day. However, the weather held all morning until just after we got home, it was unseasonably warm, and everybody had a great day. Sara even beat her previous time by an impressive 2 minutes and 11 seconds.

This year, there was again face painting, and the kids took full advantage. I am always stunned by how awesome people are at face paining these days. When I was a kid, you got a rainbow on the side of your face and called it a day.

Evie asked to be an angel:

and Ollie asked to be a “blue monster”. I’d say he fit the bill:

Oliver has never had his face painted before. I wish I would have had a video of him when the lady held up the mirror for him to see his face. Despite feeling her applying makeup all over his face, he was somehow completely unprepared for what he looked like. A slow smile spread across his face, and his eyes positively lit up. He spent most of the day baring his teeth. I’m perhaps a little biased, but he was far and away the cutest monster running around that day.

Finally, came the big moment: Evie’s race.

Evie has been looking forward to this for a year, no kidding. She was so excited to do a race. Just picking out her running clothes that morning was a whole thing. She could hardly wait until all the adult stuff was over to get to her part.

It was a little disorganized, but they finally got underway. Evie was in the youngest age group, and I really don’t think anybody else was quite as determined to give it their all the way she was. As she came whizzing past me, just the look of determination on her face, with just the faintest hint of a smile, told me that it was that perfect moment when you were a kid and you suddenly got everything you wanted.

It was a great moment while it lasted.

Afterwards, Evie was almost in tears. “I’m not even proud of this medal,” she said. It was a heartbreaking moment. I was worried perhaps she was upset that she didn’t “win”, which was something we had discussed before the race. “Why not, honey?” “The race was too short!” she lamented.

Evie has been training for this race, and taking it very seriously. Unfortunately, the race organizers did not take the 4-5 year olds quite as seriously, and just set up a little dash from one side of the field to the other. It wasn’t a real race, any more than someone saying, “I’ll race you to that tree! Go!” is a real race, and Evie knew it.

It was a sad moment, and my heart went out to her. She was right, but nonetheless I wish she could have held on to that one shining moment where she was flying over the grass and her fondest desire was achieved. So sad to see that ruined.

Oh well, I guess that’s life kid. Get used to it.

Balance Bike 2.0

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After Evie’s amazing success with the balance bike, we decided to give Ollie a try on it. It took a few days until he got it down, but now he goes like a maniac on that thing.

Not too shabby for a 2 1/2 year old!

With the two of them on bikes, I have to run to keep up. Ollie doesn’t like to put his feet on the pegs, he likes to pull them up behind him, but if he’s on a hill he can balance for a long time. Basically, he’s got the balancing down 100%, it’s just a question of how much speed he has.

100 puffs and counting

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This month we officially passed the “100 puff” mark on our Beekeeper’s Quilt, and it’s really starting to look like something.

The score for the first 100 is 90 to 10, Sara, which means I’m perfectly at 10%. Sara thinks that’s a little pathetic, but I’m pretty thrilled with it! (And also, how many stories has she published in that time?)

This month was a big month in terms of puff production. We have been driving a lot on the weekends lately, and Sara can really crank those puppies out in the car. We have quite a little basket full of these little things, and it does look really cool seeing all the different kinds of yarn. My favorites are the ones we made from the yarn we hand dyed. What a cool thing to be able to include.

So now we just keep on being busy little bees and see how fast we can get the next couple of hundred finished.

Two wrongs make a right

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Today I interrupted two people stealing the refrigerator and stove that someone illegally dumped in the alley next to our condo.

They looked guilty, I wanted to help them get it up on their truck.

Urban Chicken Wrangler

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“Uh oh,” said Sara, “The chickens have escaped.”

We were on our way to run an errand, and we saw that there were chickens wandering in the road. We had a pretty good idea where they came from, since we know there are some chickens kept in a building nearby who occasionally make an appearance at the farmer’s market.

I sighed. I was somewhat inclined to just say, “Huh, that’s interesting,” and keep going, but I knew I wasn’t going to do that. If I had chickens that needed wrangling, I’d certainly appreciate it if someone wrangled them. So I jumped out of the car and went to look for somebody.

The gate was open, so I could certainly see how the chickens got out. But after calling, “Hello?” a few times, nobody seemed to be around. I knocked on a few doors and even tried around the corner, but there just didn’t seem to be anybody about. At this point I again considered just cutting my losses and leaving. Surely I had done enough, and more than some would have. But I was also fairly sure that if I didn’t wrangle those chickens, nobody was going to wrangle them.

I took a run at the chickens and they sort of moved in the right direction. I probably could have picked them up, but I’m not exactly trained in it, and one time in West Virginia I saw a kid with the unlikely name of “Chicken Boy” almost lose an eye to a chicken scratch from one of his own chickens. And his name was Chicken Boy for christsakes, so I kind of thought the people would probably rather I didn’t try.

Luckily for me, I have a lot of experience herding my cat into areas she doesn’t want to go to (especially opening the bathroom door in the morning without letting her out to go wake up the kids), and this was kind of the same. Both the chickens and the cat have this same thing where they sort of pretend they just happened to decide to go in the direction you chased them of their own accord, but then try to veer to one side or the other with a wounded pride and hope you’ve suddenly forgotten about them.

I also made a few, “Ha!” and “chuck chuck chuck” sounds at them, and also sort of talked to them. I’m not sure if that helped or not, but it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. In any case, they all started moving in the right direction. I think they probably just thought, “Oh my god, some kind of weirdo is out here shouting at chickens! Lets get back inside before something bad happens!”, but whatever the reason, I felt unreasonably proud once I got them all in the yard, like a cowboy after a long day of ropin’ steers (but not like a Chicken Boy, because I also had both my eyes).

As I was just closing the gate, I saw someone emerge from the building. “Hello?” I called, and the man turned to me. He said something like, “Yeaup,” and waved. “Your chickens escaped! I put them back in for you!” I said, beaming with pride. “Yeaup,” he answered, waving his hand again.

I don’t know if he didn’t understand me or what, but I kind of felt like I deserved a little more than a non-committal “yeaup”. A thank you perhaps, or at least a concerned look on his face or something.

Oh well. Just a day in the life of an urban chicken wrangler. We don’t do it for the respect, ma’am, that’s just our job.

::slow walk into the sunset::