(it's what makes me me)

I was a horrible law student. I am not just saying, “Oh, I was SO bad,” when really I got A-minuses. No, I was seriously bad. I barely eked a diploma out of that place.

But even as I was tanking midterms and freezing up in the middle of “the Socratic Method,” people thought I was this great student. People actually wanted to study with me. They’d pull me aside “to pick my brain” about something or ask my opinion of page three of their outline.

I do have a point here. I am not (at all!) athletic. But people often will make comments to me which tell me that I somehow seem well-coordinated. Physically fit. Agile. Sporty.

Sporty! Me? But yes, there are people who don’t know “the real me” who believe I am sporty.

And much like how I became good at law after actually leaving law school, I am actually morphing into a somewhat sporty girl after all these years.

I am Suburban Sporty: the mythical fifth (sixth?) Spice Girl. Sporty Spice’s older, whiter aunt, maybe.

Suddenly I went from someone who does nothing to someone with a weekly yoga class (medium level of difficulty, thankyouverymuch), weekly golfing workshop (“ladies” only), and now I am a sub for a weekly tennis game.

Mo’s girlfriend Pussycat’s mom asked if I’d be interested in subbing for their regular twice-weekly game. I love tennis though for some weird reason haven’t played for the past 25 years. (But I’m sure it’ll all come back to me once I get out on the court again, right? I hope…)

The first week, they did need a sub, but thank GOD it rained. Then it rained again. Woo hoo! I was off the hook, but on the other hand, couldn’t get out to practice because duh, it was raining. D’oh.

This week started out cold and rainy, but today, the sun came out and it was gorgeous. Sure enough, I get home to a phone message: Can you play Friday?

Aaaahhhhhh!!!!!

I grabbed Bits to be my ball girl and ran out to the court by our house to practice my serve. I had a pretty good lefty serve back in the day, but I actually had a scary moment when I couldn’t remember which side you start out serving on. Oops. I’m sure all the details will come back to me. (And when I say “I’m sure,” what I actually mean is, “I hope.”)

And you know what? It did come back to me! I can still bang out a pretty good serve. It was not amazing but it went in the square and with a little bit of spin, even.

So now I’m excited for Friday. We’re playing some doubles then heading over to Starbucks. I can show off my dog bites to the ladies.

Pussycat’s mom assures me this group is “not that great” and they play “just for fun,” though don’t people always say that? I am taking the place of their best player, so I might bring their overall skill level down a titch. Gotta start somewhere. And if all else fails, at least I look the part.

Honestly, I feel like I’m falling apart here.  I mean physically.  Mentally I am okay!  But physically…grumble, grumble, grumble.

First, there was my shoulder.  It started hurting in the summer.  I ignored it and ignored it, hoping it would get better, but instead it started getting worse.  Finally, in November, I started going to a chiropractor.

I used to go to a chiropractor when I was in my 20s.  He was great and I felt  good, but I always felt like I never quite believed a lot of the claims he made.  Everything seemed very speculative.  We moved, I stopped going to him, and I still felt the same (good!) and for the next several years I was chiro-free.

This chiropractor is very nice.  He’s calming.  I like his soothing voice.  Other than the heavy sweet-spicy scented candles that are always burning at the receptionist desk, I enjoy going to his office.

We seem to have pinpointed my shoulder pain to actually originating in the muscles of my upper back, in the region my former masseuse “Esther” used to call the “chicken wings.”

Sometimes my entire arm down into my fingers goes numb. When that happens, my new chiro pops or rolls everything back into place. It is heavenly!

So I’ve been going to this new guy and have been feeling good.

Then January happens.

We go to lunch at my inlaws’ place in Laguna Woods (formerly Leisure World but call it that on pain of death!) Jane is still on limited activity from her concussion. She has a ball she keeps bouncing but is of course doing it very dangerously so I grab it from her. Thirty seconds later I have bounced the ball into a river, and thirty seconds after that, Scott is in that river, retrieving the ball. Yay, heroic, woo hoo.

He climbs out and thinks it will be hilarious to pretend to push me into the river. His push literally lifts me off both feet and I am freaking out, like already imagining myself having the same CT scan we just had for Jane a few days before. Concussion buddies! So he’s grabbing me and I’m grabbing him and I wind up just killing my shoulder.

The next day, I’m running errands with my entire arm numb down into my fingers.

You know how on Gilligan’s Island, Gilligan would get hit on the head with a coconut and have super powers, or the professor would get hit on the head and become a ladies’ man, and then in the last two minutes of the episode, they’d get hit on the head again with another coconut and go back to normal?

That’s what I did to myself! I was lifting a heavy bag and Gilligan’d myself back to about 50% normalcy. Woot. But though I can feel my fingers, “50% good” still leaves the other 50%. Fifty percent is an F.

So January is just getting started and I am the Hunchback of Notre Temecula.

Then last week I get bit by a huge German shepherd! (They say he’s six months old but I don’t believe it.) I’m dropping Mo at a new (to us) drop-in daycare place. Mo’s already back in the waiting room/induction center and I’m just standing at the counter filling out paperwork and thinking of how awesome it’s going to be to have a dog-free day at home, when suddenly another customer’s dog runs over and bites me.

(And the kind of funny thing is that I DO have one previous experience with this place: one of the few negative Yelp reviews I’ve written. I tried them for DIY dog washing and was unimpressed. Now the owner, who didn’t make the connection, is like, “Oh, don’t think it’s always like this! This is very unusual.” I hope so! And I will say, Mo had an amazing time and came home way too tired to eat the couch, which is the goal.)

It was completely unprovoked; my back was to him. He really clamped down hard, then when I spun around and got him off my first leg, he immediately sank down for a chomp at my other leg.

Pain, bruising, shakiness, worry, Tetanus shot.

So now both legs are in pain, plus my Tetanus arm. (Never again will I doubt my kids when they complain three days later that their vaccines hurt.)

Completely vulnerable and in pain, I realize I have a dentist appointment scheduled for this week. Yay! Time for some deep scaling.

So that is my litany. It’s only mid-January, people! How are we going to survive 2012? I am actually afraid to do my paperwork this afternoon because I know I’m due for a few paper cuts.

Today I am turning to chocolate. I have the last of my Gayle’s nonpareils (why are they called that? But whatever; they are so good! Maybe that is why.) I am hoarding them. I leave the Laffy Taffy and Smarties to the kids. I get the good stuff. Let the healing begin.

It’s winter, and contrary to popular belief, we DO have a cold season here in Temecula. Trust me: there are plenty of mornings when the ground is completely white with frost when I walk the dog and we have to dodge slippery patches of sidewalk ice.

I love the sun. After the solstice on December 21, I swear I can actually feel our part of the world brightening a teeny bit more each day.

Here are some ways a sun-worshipping lizard like me likes to make winter a bit cheerier and more comfortable:

1. HYDRATION:

When we spotted this cool carafe with matching drinking glass at Container Store, we knew Jane had to have it. She has always loved her “night water” and now she can keep a fresh pitcher at her bedside.

2. MORE HYDRATION:

I am around tons of kids every day so I wash my hands all the time. I have a different hand lotion in every bathroom plus several in my purses and coat pockets. Weleda Skin Food is the one I put on before I go to bed at night. Weleda is expensive, but for most of their bodycare products, a little bit goes a long way. I buy mine at Henry’s/Sprouts during their 20% off Bodycare sales, which they seem to run about once every other month or so.

3. HOT AND HEARTY BREAKFAST:

Kodiak Cakes are amazing! This mix makes delicious, hearty, filling pancakes, and it is SO easy because you just need to add water. I hate buying something thinking, “Yay, a mix,” then realizing I need eggs, oil, butter, etc etc. I like the ingredients list. Yum.

4. HOT SPRINGS:

We are very lucky to have Glen Ivy right up the road in Corona. Glen Ivy gets busy in the spring and summer, but the top-secret best time to visit is in the dead of winter. The pools and springs are hot, so they warm you right up. No fighting crowds! No sunburn! No bachelorette parties! Heaven.

Jane has earned some impressive nicknames, like  ”the field marshal,” “the little general.”

I like to think of her not so much as bossy, but rather as a skilled manipulator of people.

I don’t think “manipulative” is always a bad thing.  We are just going to have to work with her to teach her to channel her powers for good, not evil.

For example….

Jane is on two weeks of light activity following a bad concussion.  (Side note:  her concussion was called “moderate,” which is apparently really bad.  You never want to hear the words “vegetable” come out of your pediatrician’s mouth unless he’s talking about something you need to be eating more of.  Moderate doesn’t sound bad, but “mild” is the good one and “moderate” is the bad one.)

Light activity has been torture for our entire family.  Jane is extremely active, and she is very restless.  Just watching her walk down the street, in her crazy, bouncy way, I want to wrap her head in bubble wrap.

So yesterday afternoon, one of the neighbor kids brings over a new Monster High karaoke microphone toy.   This little girl is in Jane’s class so they know each other pretty well.  I’m sitting outside in the driveway doing Sudoku and watching them play.

It was fascinating because the first words out of the girl’s mouth, even as she’s lugging her karaoke kit across the street, are, “Only I  can sing.  Nobody else can sing.  You can watch me sing but you can’t sing.”

So does Jane get frustrated or angry?  Does she frown or yell?  Does she try to reason or argue?

No, Jane does not.  Instead, Jane says, “Okay, that’s fine.  Yes, that’s very good.”

So I’m doing my Sudoku and I’m trying to not get involved, but just to observe and jump in if anyone is about to get a moderate concussion.

And then I get to see Jane in action.  You see, Jane is masterful.  The field marshals of the world are different from the rest of us.  I seriously doubt you could teach skills like these.  It’s something inborn.

Jane says, “Well, I have my art kit here, and of course we’re going to need tickets.”

(Jane at this point is like some wily creature out of an Aesop fable.)

“Tickets?”

“Yes, of course!  You’re going to have a big audience, right?  You’re going to need tickets.”

And it goes from there.

“You’ll need an announcer, right?”

“Announcer?”

“Yes!  To introduce you.  You’re not just going to walk out there.  You need someone to get the crowd excited.”

And within ten minutes, we have this:

"....a VERY special guest"

The neighbor girl was struggling to keep up with Jane’s rigid quality control specifications for the tickets. (I missed how Jane got the girl to make the tickets, but I know for a fact Jane wrote one and the other girl wrote 24. It looked like a really tedious job, especially when you’re watching someone else sing on your karaoke machine and you can’t sing because you have to finish the damn tickets. No, nobody exactly told you that you can’t sing until you finish them, but you just know it’s true.)

Well played, Madam Jane.  A little scary, to tell you the truth (she reminds me sometimes of a much nicer version of Stewie from Family Guy), but pretty awesome too.

Spotted at Intimacy, the store founded by Oprah’s “bra whisperer,” these are travel holders for molded cup bras:

Seems like overall, promotional gift items are down for the holidays this year, but….

Love it! It’s a brick of chocolate imprinted with Wilson Garage, my parents’ auto mechanic. The chocolate is actually pretty good, and the brick comes surrounded by teeny little dark and milk chocolates in the shape of cars and trucks.

And then there’s Security Bank, which is something of a boutique bank in Riverside. Several of the Ladies of the League have Security Bank connections.

They presented my husband with this:

The tag around the neck of the bottle reads:

Cachepot. Behind the bottle…the story of Security Bank’s 1st cuvee. A close friend of the Bank owns a beautiful 14-acre vineyard of 100% Merlot in teh southern area of the Napa Valley. In 2009, they had an exceptional harvest, which after all contracts were fulfilled, yielded several additional tons of the prized grape.

The bank took the grapes to Spelletich Cellars in Napa to be prepared et voila: a Christmas gift worthy of Marie Antoinette. Cheers!

Notice a trend?

I appreciate proper use of the word “literally”:

Here’s what happens when you have a bird feeder under the grass lawn:

Sometimes good things really do come in small packages.

I treasure a little gem of a cookbook called “French Vegetarian Cooking – A Step-by-Step Guide” by Marie-Pierre Moine. It is part of a series called “In a Nutshell” and it’s teeny tiny. Sadly, I’ve checked out the others in the series and they aren’t as good, but this French one is terrific!

I was frustrated that she kept mentioning an herb called chervil. I’d heard of chervil but never tasted it and couldn’t find it anywhere. So I got ambitious and planted some chervil myself et voila!:

It worked! Upcoming: Peas Braised with Lettuce.

We are discovering Jane’s wonderful and surprising new hobby: house cleaning. She loves it! I never stop marveling that I actually gave birth to one kid who loves math and another who loves cleaning.

Jane’s favorite thing to do is walk around with a spray bottle of cleaner and a cloth. (We use bar mops for most of our cleaning in our house. I love that I can just toss them in the washing machine with some bleach on a hot cycle to sanitize.)

We were going through Lysol for kitchen counters like it was going out of style, and unfortunately, Windex makes her lips burn and swell.

I wasn’t able to find any home cleaning recipes I liked online, so I made this one up myself. Enjoy “Jane’s (all natural!) Aromatherapy Cleaning Solution”:

2 c water
2 T white vinegar
1 drop bergamot essential oil
1 drop rosemary essential oil
1 drop lemongrass essential oil

You could customize with whatever fragrances you like. Jane’s blend has a nice citrusy aroma. Enjoy!