The Cowgirl's Daddy

Looking back now, she can’t remember if she wanted to be a cowgirl because she loved to go for rides out in the desert with her daddy on his bike, a little-girl-friendly Honda Trail 90, or because she and her daddy watched a Clint Eastwood movie together.  All she knows is, when she was a very little girl, that’s what she wanted to be.

Of course, this changed time and time again, and today she is most definitely not at all, even a little bit of a cowgirl - at least not on the outside.  

Her earliest memories, though, include many adventures with her daddy (and her mom, and her dog) out in the desert and the mountains of Arizona.

There was the time they left their house while it was still dark to cook breakfast out in the desert at sunrise, and they saw a gila monster for the first time in the wild.  There was the time they went camping with friends who covered the little girl with horned lizards (possibly at her request, or at least with her approval) and thought it was the funniest and best thing.  There was another time they went camping and she grabbed a hot lantern and burned her hands, and had to sit with them down in a cooler full of ice.  There were wonderful summers in Greer, going on horseback rides through the woods, and hiking Mount Baldy, and watching afternoon thunderstorms.  And there was the time she went fishing with her daddy, and another boy and his dad, and she thought her line had become hung up on a rock, but when her daddy came to check, it turned out to be a fish so big he had to land it for her, and the boy was so mad that a girl had caught the biggest fish that day.

She always thought it was amazing that they would take off on the bike for a ride (she sat behind her daddy with her arms around his waist), head out into the desert until she was sure they were lost and would never be able to find their way back, and would then pop out at the Pinnacle Peak General Store (where he would buy her an Ol’ Bob Miller’s Sasparilla) before heading home.  So many times in the desert, in the woods, up on the rim (the Mogollon Rim, a favorite place of his) she would be absolutely sure they were lost, but her daddy always, always knew exactly how to get home.

When she was just nine, she and her daddy and her uncle hiked the Grand Canyon - down the Kaibab trail, camping at Phantom Ranch, and ascending the Bright Angel.  She felt like such an accomplished outdoorswoman, but, much later, she realized that her daddy must have carried the bulk of her gear, and the food, and the water.  

When she got older, and “Daddy” became “Dad”, and she wanted to have adventures of her own, he encouraged her every time.  His favorite photos of her would be the ones she took in Mexico with a goat, and in Kenya, and even later, with her own children when they traveled the world together.  He told her once that he was proud of the way she and her husband took their children all over, because traveling is “how you really get to know the world, and people, and yourself.”  

Like her daddy, she loved the adventure of books.  She thinks now that it must have amazed and slightly confused her more social mother that she and her dad could sit in quiet companionship, happily reading their own books, for quite a while.  

And, like her daddy, she loved riding through the countryside, looking out the window at all of creation for hours, quietly imagining the events that might have occurred there, or what it would be like to live in that place.  Driving the back roads became a favorite way to relax and have fun.

Before he walked her down the aisle on her wedding day (she would realize later that she had chosen to marry a man who was a lot like her dad, with his love of the outdoors, of fly fishing, of backpacking, of old cars, and of doing things right), the cowgirl’s daddy leaned down and kissed her on the cheek and said, “You chose well, kiddo.”  

When she turned 40, her parents came to her house to help her celebrate, and her dad wanted to get her a special present, so they headed to the Boot Barn to purchase a pair of genuine cowboy boots.  After trying on a few different styles, she found a pair of Ariats that looked they had already been nicely worn in, but also had a pink lining that appealed to the girl in her.  When she showed her dad the ones she had chosen, he said, in his humorous way, “Those will help you to keep kicking ass in life.”  She came to wear those boots when she had to do something scary, like give a talk in front of a crowd for the first time, and needed the extra courage the boots gave her.  Every time she wore them, she was reminded of her dad, and how much he loved her, and how proud he was of her, and it made her a little less afraid.

Five days before the cowgirl’s daddy died, he called her on the phone to ask for her okay to print copies of a little article she had written so he and her mom could show it to their friends.  He told her how much he liked it and what a good job she had done, and then, just before saying goodbye, he said, “Love ya, girl.”  She remembered this later and considered it a huge gift, because although she had never, ever doubted that he loved her, he wasn’t one to say it out loud very often.  And that, it turned out, was the very last thing the cowgirl’s daddy said to her.

So, when it came time to say goodbye to him on this earth, for this time, the cowgirl pulled up her boots, gave her daddy an eskimo kiss on the nose, and thanked him for making her who she is, grateful every single day that the cowgirl’s daddy was hers.  She will always consider herself the most blessed daughter in the entire world. 

In Defense of My Millennials

I have heard so many people complaining about "those lazy, self-absorbed millennials" and how they are going to drive this country into the ground, and it makes my mama-bear tendencies come out in droves, because I am the actual, real-life mother of two of them.  "Well," they say, "We aren't talking about your children." Excuse me, but if you aren't talking about my children, you are probably referring to my students, or to their friends. So in their defense, I would like to just point out a few observations:

Yep, I've met a few who are lazy.  And there are a few who are self-absorbed.  I am prone to laziness, and I most definitely am often self-absorbed.   I went to school with a few lazy and/or selfish people.  Some of their parents were lazy and/or selfish.  And grandparents.  You get the picture - it's so easy to generalize and assume, but it does nothing helpful to do either of those things.  There are amazing and not-so-amazing people in every generation.

I also get my hackles up when we (and by 'we' I mean people over about 40 who rant about millennials) make statements like, "they all got participation trophies for just being on the team!" as if they, as little children, demanded such things.  If I remember correctly, we are the ones who gave them those trophies and prizes; and do you know what I see now in my grown-up children?  They have learned that everyone is valuable whether or not they are the most skilled, or the biggest, or the best.  This is a beautiful thing - it has taught my children and their co-millennials to be way more inclusive and compassionate than I ever was at their age.  My students regularly give up their summers to serve orphans overseas, to participate in helping women leave lives of prostitution, to work with doctors in developing countries to provide life-saving and life-altering surgeries on children, to dig wells to provide clean water for people who have no access, and so much more.  Two years ago, through the non-profit Journeymen International  (started by one of my millennials when he was still a student), three of my students designed and then saw the construction of: a community center and storm shelter in the Philippines, a church and youth education center in the Dominican Republic, and an education and community center in Sierra Leone.  Three students. One school.  One year.  Imagine what happens through all of the students like these, all over the world.  My students are generous to all, and know way better than me how to truly love people who aren't like them no matter what.  They share extravagantly - over the long weekend, in fact, at a student conference we attended, 1000 students gave an offering to help refugee children. And $50,000 was collected.  The way my children and my students care for the marginalized and outcast often puts me to shame in the best of ways - I strive to be like them.

"They are always looking at their phones and taking selfies" is another good one.  We say it like it's their fault that all of this technology has happened, and that they should be ashamed of using it.  Do they take selfies?  For sure.  When I was younger, all I could do was call a friend on the land-line phone (for hours!) or write a note or letter.  Now my kids can take a picture of themselves to show their friends exactly what they are doing or how they are feeling.  And we get angry at them for doing so.  Yes, they use their phones to get the news (so do I. Every morning.)  When I was young, the only option was local news broadcast on radio or TV.  Now they get news from all over the world and are way more aware of what is going on globally. This is technology. This is a good thing.  As for "fake news", don't even get me started.  I have observed that my kids are WAY more savvy about rooting out the real from the fake than most of the 'old people' I know.  Remember that Millennials have been advertised to and sold to their entire lives.  In my experience, they are excellent at discerning the real from the fake.

"We gave them everything!" To be sure, we have given them a lot. Many good things; many things we never had.  So let's not forget that besides all of the great stuff we've given them, we've also given them incredible pollution, an unstable health care system, and crippling debt. Last week I gave a student a ride and when I was asking her about her schedule, she explained to me that she holds down two jobs while being a full-time student so that her parents, who are having financial trouble since her mom was laid off from the corporate job she had for 15 years, don't have to take out more loans for her.  This is not the first, second, or even third time I've heard this same story.  It is sadly common. When I was in college, my tuition was $485 a semester.  My daughter paid that much in rent. Per month.  And she was getting a good deal.  Last month a former student of mine posted on Facebook that he had paid off his college loan and was celebrating the freedom he felt from it - he graduated 13 years ago.  That is not uncommon, and it is not the result of bad financial management - that's just how long it took. The debt this generation will inherit is unimaginable to me.

We've shown them that what we say and do are often two different things, and then we are angry at them for being skeptical people.  

We've shown them that big business can't always be trusted, and that money doesn't make everyone happy, and then we are mad at them because they don't want "normal" corporate jobs.  This doesn't make them lazy - this makes them brilliant.  Redefining what the "American Dream" is so that it fulfills more of the soul, for more people.  The more time I spend with those dang millennials, the more I actually understand, relate to, and actually like them.  Go figure.

I might be the only old person who feels this way, but I have so much hope for the future because I actually know real Millennials and I for one cannot wait for them to start ruling the world.  

Musings On Turning Fifty

So, obviously, it's been a while.  But that's okay, because I've been really super busy doing very important things.  We had a child go to college, a child graduate from college, the same child move down south and go to graduate school, and a long trip overseas for the summer (ok, I did find time to watch the full season of Poldark and all of the episodes of Finding Your Roots on pbs.com, but no judgment, all right?)
In a week or so, I will be turning 50.  If you just thought to yourself, "How can this be?",  know that I myself am doing the same thing.  This aging thing is really weird.  I won't blather on about time passing so quickly, or that high school seems like it just happened yesterday, blah blah blah, but here are a few observations I've made recently:
First, my hands look like my mom's.  Except her fingernails are way nicer because she was taught to use gloves for things like dish washing and gardening, and I was too 'liberated' as a young woman of the 80's for such things, and now I have fingernails like rubber.  I used to look at my mom's hands in church and wonder how the veins could stick up like that, and now I know that it's just a thing that happens in your forties.
Second, fashion trends really and truly do come around again.  My daughter took my overalls out of the closet two years ago because they are now 'cool', and then this summer she found an Allen Allen periwinkle linen overall dress (jumper, perhaps?) in there that she squealed with glee over and now she's wearing that - she even snapchatted me a picture of herself in it (it looks fantastic - it was one of my favorites for much of the nineties.)  Also, 'yoga pants' - these are actually just leggings with loose calves.  Good thing I saved my gigantic U of A sweatshirt from the 80's to wear with those!
Third, now that my kids are relatively grown up (which is a weird thing itself), I am considered a 'successful parent' because they have actually turned out pretty well, which means they still love us and talk to us and come home sometimes, and they aren't presently in jail or on probation.  When people compliment me by telling me I have done such a good job mommying, I feel like I've gotten away with something, or that I've secretly played a trick on the world.
Fourth, I have noticed that I sometimes think / occasionally say things that a grumpy old person would say.  So far I haven't yelled at anyone to "Stay off my lawn!" (they can't! we have a fence, thank God), but I often think/mutter things when I am driving around town or am in Target.  I suspect it's partly because as one gets older, one doesn't care as much what people think.  It's almost like I feel I've earned the right to be a self-righteous, judgmental snob.  I know I'm not the only one who does this - I have read the Facebook rants of many others.  So far, to my credit, I am safe because I don't post things on Facebook very often, and I mostly drive alone.
There are a few youthful things I will continue to hold on to as I enter my next decade: pop tarts,  Rainbow flip flops, squirting whipped cream directly into my mouth, and video games, to name just a few.  Happy birthday to me!

We are Drought-Tolerant

Although everyone is blogging and posting about current events, I have decided not to, because a) I'm much too smart to lay my opinions out on the internet for everyone to misinterpret and dissect; I have found it's way more effective to have an actual conversation about such matters, b) I'm chicken or c) both a and b.
Nor am I going to blog about the puppy (he is on my very bad side right now because he recently ate a new pair of Rainbows, these really cool leather flip flops that people wear every single day out here), Jason's graduation (although it was wonderful and we are so proud of him!) or Grace being amazing (which she is - she would be my nominee for family member of the year if there was such a thing).
Instead, I've decided to answer the question that several (and by several, I mean 2) people back east have asked, and that is: How is your family being affected by the drought?
Well, the creek is totally dry in our neighborhood, as is our town lake, and our yard looks below-average, because we have to water 25% less (also, Jamey is still recovering from shoulder surgery, so we have a substitute lawn-keeper who does not quite share Jamey's "pride of ownership").  I'm not posting a photo though because our grass is still pretty green (our sprinklers go on at 2 a.m., hoping that no one notices) and we don't want to be 'drought-shamed' by anyone.  I really want to keep the grass, because come fall we will have groups of up to 100 students coming over to picnic/play cornhole/camp out/watch meteor showers/eat dinner/play wiffle ball.
There is no garden this year, which is okay, because we are out of town quite a bit anyway.  But the orchard is still there, and the plums are abundant although small, and the peaches are the size of marbles.  And when I say marbles, I am not exaggerating - I took this photo of a marble next to a peach to show just how small they are.  No peach cobblers this year (I actually don't ever make peach cobblers; they involve baking and I try to avoid that in the summer heat).  I will still be making plum and apricot jam in the fall, however, even if it takes way more effort to get 4 cups of plum puree.  Take that, drought!
Also, there are a lot more critters around, because they are coming into the neighborhood to find water.  And apparently there's been a major increase in rattlesnake sightings, so now when I run with the dog in the mornings, I keep my eyes up ahead looking for snakes in the path.  We haven't seen any yet.
We did, however, see this coyote one day.  It followed me unnoticed (I was intently listening to a favorite podcast; "Stuff You Missed in History") until the dog happened to turn around and see it.  Then, of course, the puppy thought he had found a new friend to play with and the coyote shunned him and went under the barbed-wire ranch fence.  My neighbor, a forest ranger, suspects it was a mama coyote making sure we didn't find her cubs.
So, I water the herbs outside the back door with old cooking or dish water, and try to take shorter showers - you know, the usual.  And we look forward to this fall and winter when we have been assured by the fine weather people that there is 100% chance of it being an El Nino year, and everyone can look forward to wimpy Californians lamenting the rain and clouds and lack of sun, and we can all get "Storm-Watch:2015" updates constantly.
Until then, I will just continue to enjoy these summer nights by listening to baseball games on the porch!

Adventures with Puppy

So, as our adored and busy puppy Reddick approaches his first birthday, I thought it would be fun (?) to take a look back over the 8 months he has lived with us and highlight a few of the things he has chewed / eaten.  Good thing he is so stinking cute!


Here's part of our sprinkler system - the drip lines.  He chewed several sections of these, as well as some of the wires from the controller....twice.  Naughty dog.  Boo.

Wood (below) is one of his favorite things to chew.  Fortunately, we do have a wood pile, and lots of sticks that fall off the trees, so that's actually been helpful.  It's convenient when he can head for the wood pile, choose a nice piece of almond or oak, and then spend a few hours shredding it in the yard.  Keeps him nice and busy.



What isn't so great is that our porch (and house, come to think of it....) is made of wood.  So I have found little sections like this one on the porch, the back steps, the deck, and the picnic table.  Fortunately, he hasn't seemed to think any of them tasty enough to go back for more.

The leash was a favorite item - he started chewing in the back seat of my car on the way to the beach and I didn't realize what was happening until he had almost gone the whole way through, rendering it quite useless.  Now we have two leashes.








This is one of my favorite photos - you will notice that it is (was) a spray bottle that was purchased in one of those travel kits, empty.  I made my very own "puppy no-chew spray" using cider vinegar and cayenne pepper.  Guaranteed to work - I mean really, who would want to even get near such a mixture?  My eyes sting just remembering it.
Results seemed positive - we actually sprayed it on the porch steps.  But then, silly me, I left the bottle itself sitting on the railing, and this is what waited in the yard for me the next morning.  He sure showed me!



I don't know what kind of foolish person brings a nerf ball to the dog park, but you've got to know that this is what will happen to it within a day or two.  I especially like how proud Reddick looks.  "Look what I did to that stupid ball!"

Not pictured:  Rainbow sandals (I have now sewn mine in three places), headphones (I dropped them on my way to the car and didn't realize it until it was, alas, too late), the puppy brush (also left on porch railing), the cat's bed, a newspaper, bike tire tubes, and a large variety of caps, plastic bottles, and old paper towels and their tubes.

Just so everyone knows:  we do indeed feed and exercise this dog.  And, there are enough bones scattered around our yard to actually assemble a cow's skeleton.  Also, fyi, as a trick, you can refill the hollow ones with cheese whiz or peanut butter and re-use them.  It works for a while!  Like I said, good thing he's cute.

The Problem With Soccer

I have meant to write so many things about this, Jason's senior soccer season.  But obviously it's easier thought and said than done.  We have come to love soccer - it's a really great game to watch.
The problem for moms of senior boys is, that when we see this:

What we really see is this:

I spent the whole season pretty much just being incredibly grateful that I have gotten to enjoy seeing my boy play a game he loves (and is darn good at!) for all these years.  He has somehow avoided major injury - never had a pulled muscle, a bum knee, or a concussion that has kept him out, which is unusual (for all the 'flopping' that takes place, soccer can be quite a brutal sport at times!).  This year, for the third year in a row, Jason played every minute of every league game. He was voted team captain, and made the all-league team, which is a great way to end a career.  Even though the team did not have a winning record (in fact, Atascadero boys' soccer has not yet had a winning season!), we could all see the team and players improving, and the parents were absolutely wonderful, and the coaches are great men, and the boys played their hearts out in so many games that were so close (three overtime games in one week!), and it was a joy to watch this team this year.
So, I savored those games, and felt old occasionally, but also felt really excited for whatever comes next, because I have been reminded again and again that my kids are truly amazing, and time does fly.  And now, instead of the stress of being the parent of a player, Jamey and I get to enjoy being co-spectators with them.  MLS games, here we come!

At Emily's House

We went to Boston for a week.  It was amazing!  We used up our airline miles and hotel points to take a vacation for 7 days to celebrate our 25th anniversary (which is very strange, since we are clearly way too young to have been married that long!).  We went straight from the airport to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees, and Derek Jeter's next-to-last game, which brought joy to my baseball-loving heart.  We walked the Freedom Trail, toured Salem and Cape Cod, eating cannolis, lobster rolls, chow-dah and pub food along the way.  We toured not one but two breweries, and the Mayflower (did you know that the Pilgrims also brewed beer?), and a few really old cemeteries where pilgrims, founding fathers and revolutionaries are buried.

My favorite day, however, was the day we spent in what I like to call "English Lit Nerd Heaven".  We drove to Amherst and toured the house of Emily Dickinson, my favorite poet.  Because Jamey is not only smart but also a really good sport, he agreed to pay actual money for a 90-minute tour of the two homes on the Dickinson property (one was where Emily's family lived and the other is where her brother lived with his family).  

My favorite Emily Dickinson poem used to be "Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and knows the tune without the words, and never stops at all". Just think about that for a few minutes - it's really good.  In recent times, however, this poem has become really trendy and is all over Pinterest and Etsy, leaving me no choice but to choose another favorite, alas.  Fortunately for me, Emily wrote over 1500 poems and I love many of them.  She has a way of describing simple, homey things in a way that makes them very deep and profound.  I've always liked her, and I learned a few things about her that made me like her and relate to her even more.

So I knew that she was pretty much a recluse - that is well-known (despite all of my traveling this year, I am pretty sure I would make a good recluse as long as I could go into my backyard, and for runs, and order takeout).  She was also a great baker who would lower gingerbread down from her bedroom in a basket to her nephew as he played 'pirate'.  She was a gardener who could look at each flower, bee, and leaf in wonder.  And, she was an avid reader with a huge library who enjoyed talking to family and friends about books.  I have always felt a kinship to people who are content to just enjoy time at home with family and books.  

And so, that tour was a highlight for me - I may have even gotten teary a time or two.  And to make the day even better, if possible, on the way back to Boston we visited Walden Pond (complete with a replica of Thoreau's little hut), and drove past the homes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne - be still my heart! It was almost too much to behold at one time. 

And here we are, at home again, where it is absolutely wonderful (even if it was 90 degrees today and we are still desperately in need of rain).

I will end with a new favorite poem by Miss Emily Dickinson:

"I never saw a Moor.

I never saw the Sea -

Yet I know how the Heather looks

And what a Billow be -

I never spoke with God

Nor visited in Heaven -

Yet certain am I of the spot

As if the checks were given -"

Puppy Update...or, "Pupdate"

We are trying not to let our lives revolve around the puppy.  After all, Jason has started his senior (what the..?!) year of high school, Grace's roommates are trickling back into SLO after the summer, and we have the looming upcoming fall quarter to plan for.  But what with puppy school, crate training, other training (for example, "don't sit on the chickens"), etc, it does take up quite a bit of attention from all of us.  We've probably been learning almost as much about Reddick and puppy-ownership as he has been about life here in Garden Farms.  Here are some of our most astute observations:
1. When dogs go to the beach, the smellier they become, the more fun they are having.
2. Coconut dog shampoo is amazing at eliminating gross beach smells.
3. Nothing takes away the foul smell of the 'bacon and cheese stuffed hoof' breath after your puppy has been chewing on one for two hours.  It just wears off over time.  Hopefully.
4. There are waaaaay too many toys for sale at Petco, so don't be sucked into buying all of them, even if they are in the 50% off bin.  Although Reddick loves the frisbee, soccer ball, and stuffed squirrel, his favorite toys are things he found in the yard, like "stick", "root", "bark", "someone's old tennis ball", and "really old bone from some other dog".
5. Speaking of Petco, you can actually sample the doggy treats at the self-serve dog treat bar.  Jamey highly recommends the pink ones with peanut butter filling (we were assured that they are the same recipe as people cookies, except without sugar).
6.  I think I understand why it is called "House breaking". Glad we have mostly wood floors!
7.  Puppy teeth can actually poke through denim, even on accident.
8.  Puppies have a weird love for feet, shoes (especially leather ones!) and shoelaces.
9.  Puppies love low-hanging grapes.  Not only are they delicious, but getting to the grapes is like a game for them.
10.  In fact, puppies try to eat everything.  For example: shoes, hammocks, a rose bush (that one smarted!), anything made of wood, moths, toilet paper, his own collar and leash.
OK, I feel like I should stop talking about the puppy now and get on with other things.  But he's so darn cute....

Dog People

We got back to our house at about 5 last Thursday evening.  It was wonderful - when we moved from Orange County to SLO many years ago, I drove the kids in the car and when we pulled up in front of our house and they got out, Grace said, "It smells like camping!"....well, that's how I felt when we pulled into our driveway.  Blue sky and fresh air (except for a little smoke blowing over our way from the fire in Yosemite) were waiting, and Grace was there waiting for us as well (she got back from Thailand a few days before us).  We did notice, however, that it was quiet.  No barking dog greeted us.  And then next morning, when I got up, I noticed that squirrels had once again stolen all of the walnuts from our tree (thieving little monsters!!).  Not only that, but two of them actually had the gall to play tag with each other inside the yard, right in front of the kitchen window where I could see them.  Ugh, I missed my dog.  (Note: at this point in the story I will just mention that I may have unloaded a bb into the rear left leg of one of these offenders, warning him to get out and never return, in honor of my dog.)  The final straw for me, I think, was when I looked out of the living room window and the gas man was right there, checking the meter.  He hasn't been inside the yard for years - when Max was around, he had to stand at the gate and check with his magic laser light thingy (I believe that's the technical term).  We could stand it no more.  Plus, an online query showed that 2 border collie-mix puppies were currently at the SLO Animal Services shelter awaiting adoption.
So, fewer than 24 hours after arriving home, we were at the pound looking at dogs.  The two original puppies were already gone by that time, but lo and behold, there were 7 puppies from a Border Collie mom (and a dad of unknown and morally questionable breeding) waiting to go up for adoption on Saturday morning.  Two of them had the classic black and white border collie markings.  One of those was a boy.  Who can say no when such a series of events works together in your favor?  Not us!
So, on Saturday, we went and picked up little Reddick (named after the A's right fielder by guess who?) and he has made the house feel like home (i.e. chaos) again.  This is what we have learned about him so far:  he does pretty great at night, he is stubborn but super smart and trains fairly easily, he loves sticks, baseballs, grass, tug of war, our feet, and chicken poop pretty much in that order.  We are looking forward to teaching him to play catch with a frisbee, taking him on campus, to Big Sur, and the beach, and to seeing just how big he will get.  Next Tuesday, Reddick starts puppy school at the local Petco.  That should be a hoot!  I haven't yet entered the world of people-who-are-way-more-into-dogs-than-other-humans but I think I am about to.  Anyone reading this has my permission to slap me if I ever start talking baby talk to the new dog, or do something crazy like buy him a sweater.

Observations After Being Overseas For Six Weeks

Our whole family is back home at last - Jamey and Jason and me from East Asia, and Grace from Thailand (she has started her own blog to tell about her summer, quite well-written, I might add, at isaiah3510.blogspot.com).  I really recommend some overseas travel if you can do it sometime.  There's nothing like it to make you appreciate your home, think about what is really important, and even gain some perspective on things that you/we could do differently.  We arrived safely in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening, July 29 after a very long flight, and took the shuttle to a hotel very close-by, where we stayed for another day to make sure that our students could finish with closure and get a head start on jet lag recovery.  I have this little ritual of thinking of things that I am thankful for in the mornings, and here are my 5 items from July 30th: 1. Jamey (it was his birthday that day!), 2. Fresh air (mind you, we were right by LAX), 3. Non-smoking hotel rooms, 4. American plumbing,  5. In-n-Out Burger.
This was our third summer trip to East Asia (I will mention at this point that while we did not spend much time in Beijing, we were able to do a quick tour of the Great Wall and Forbidden City and a few other sites on our way home, since we flew out of that airport, and that is where these pictures were taken), and while I do love America, there are many things that this amazing culture does that are super impressive, like caring for and respecting the older generation, showing generosity, and hospitality.  A couple of stories from the summer:
We wanted to send a few post cards out, but it is difficult when you don't know the language and the addresses must in part be written in characters.  So Jamey asked a student he had basically just met if he could help him out, and that student eagerly gave up an afternoon, during his finals week, to help him (30 postcards. Why so complex? No idea. Not wrong, just different!)  This same student also helped Jamey find and purchase a bike so he could get some early-morning riding in.  Two of our students, Stephanie and Cassie, and I were eating lunch in one of the cafeterias, when Cassie needed to use the bathroom, so we thought we would use our newly-acquired language skills to ask a couple of students sitting by us if they could tell us where the bathroom was.  Well, as often happened, they had no idea what we were trying to say (this was sometimes frustrating because these are not dumb students - Cassie goes to Cornell and Steph to Cal Poly, and we really did pay attention in our language class), so we pulled out our trusty paper of translated menu items and common phrases that some wise friends had given us, and pointed to, "Where is the water closet?"  The girls read the translation and nodded, and then stood up, and motioned for us to follow (leaving their half-eaten lunches on the table).  "They are going to walk us over to it because they don't speak English.  How cute," I thought.  Then they walked down the stairs. "Hmmm, it must be on the first floor."  Then they walked out the door.  "Hmmm, it must be along the side and you enter from outside.  No wonder we couldn't find it!"  Then we followed them across the basketball court ("Wait, where are they taking us?") and inside one of the dorms and down the hall.  Those sweet girls left their lunch on the table to walk three strangers to their own room so that one of them could use the restroom.  As we waited for Cassie, Stephanie and I got to look around this small room that was shared by 6 female students.  Each girl had a bunk, with a mosquito net, a very small section of closet, and a shelf.  But they were all there and made us feel like we were celebrities who had just shown up in their room. This is pretty much how we were treated all summer.  Seriously.  You could get used to that.
I also think our language teachers were incredibly gracious to us as they had to listen to us absolutely  butcher their language day after day.  To say it is 'complex' is a gross understatement - one student kindly explained to me that if I want to be able to read a magazine, or a newspaper, I will "only need to learn about 9,000 characters!"  I'm pretty sure I won't be reading any of those items any time soon.
So, in our usual fashion, we've had an amazing and wonderful adventure, and realized that there really, really, really is no place like home.  Now please excuse me while I go cook what Jason is calling our 'ordinary American dinner' of chicken on the grill, a salad, and an assortment of fruit and veggies from the fridge (#6 on my thankful list).

The Roller Coaster That Was This Spring

I am currently taking a break from packing and preparing our house for tomorrow, when Jamey, Jason and I head out for 6 weeks on a summer mission to East Asia.

The boys on a Father's Day mountain bike ride at Montana De Oro

Generally, I don't at all like leaving home for more than a couple of days, but I must admit, I'm kind of looking forward to this trip.  Last week, we had to put our beloved Max down (we absolutely knew it was time).  This was the same day that we dropped Grace off at the SLO airport to leave for her own summer mission trip to Thailand.  From fear, to excitement, great happiness to extreme sorrow, we have experienced it all over the past few weeks!

Grace at the SLO airport, ready to fly!!

So many wonderful things happened - Grace finished her sophomore year, with honors, in a major that she loves, and headed off to work with women and children for the summer.    And Jason topped off a great junior year in high school by being awarded an academic letter for his good grades in high school.  Jamey and I had the chance to return one more time to El Salvador to close out a wonderful partnership with the ministry there, and got to debrief a team of amazing alums who spent the past year there (and brought home the world's best coffee!).  Quite a few students that we are close to just graduated from Cal Poly and are heading out into all kinds of fantastic places.  Today, we watched the USA beat Ghana in the World Cup with about 100 other fans at Laguna Grill in SLO.  We have also discovered a family of beavers living in the creek in our neighborhood, and we have walked down to watch them swim around in the water several times this week - it's like watching the National Geographic Channel live!

Max, keeping an eye on the yard like a good watchdog

But, at the same time....I miss my dog.  I think that I hear him for a split second when I hear leaves rustle, or when my neighbor's dog barks.  I expect to hear him bark when a truck goes down the road, or see him at the back door.  And Wednesday morning, a squirrel had the gaul to sit in the walnut tree and chatter at me (I shot that thing out of the tree in Max's honor!).
And so, I think we are all looking forward to packing up clothes, games, books, coffee (and creamer!) and heading west tomorrow for a few weeks of big city, crazy and great food, language class, new friends, and adventure.
Since we will be without the internet until about August 1, I will be sure to take a lot of photos and make a note of the best stories to share once we get back.  Grace's stories, too.... We should have enough time to share at least a few before we are off to get ready for fall!

A Lovely Easter

These are the most glorious few weeks of the year in the neighborhood.  Everything is blooming - irises, wisteria, black locust trees (they drip with white blossoms that smell amazing), the honeysuckle outside my window.  On top of this, my neighbor's goat had triplets and when Jamey and I went for an evening walk on Thursday they were playing "king of the mountain".  And, to boot, I am rereading one of my favorite books of all time, Phillip Keller's A Shepherd Looks At The 23rd Psalm, which puts me in a pastoral mood for days, maybe even weeks.  I prefer the term "pastoral"  to "lazy".  I just want to sit in my chair on the deck and look across the creek at the pasture and the cows for hours....listening to baseball of course.

  And, I made blue eggs.  I saw them online and thought they were beautiful, so I gave it a try myself - the coloring requires boiling red cabbage and vinegar together (yuk!) and then soaking the eggs for about 24 hours.  I got a dozen eggs from my friend PJ because I wanted to see how the color would work on a variety of tans, browns, and aquas.  After they were colored, I put them into a bowl, snapped a photo, then put them in the fridge and gazed upon their beauty for a couple of days.  But really, there's not too much you can do with unpeeled eggs.  So, I eventually pickled half of them, and the other half got deviled.  They were just as delicious as usual at our Easter dinner.
We had nine people around the table (actually two tables, pushed together).  Two of these diners were students (well, three, if you include Grace, who spent the day with us), and one of them, a sweet girl named Ivey, brought me such a wonderful bunch of flowers.   I am bummed to say that I forgot to take a picture of the beautiful and feast-laden table.  I must have been having a really good time eating - especially the most amazing glaze on the ham .  None of us are really 'ham people', but this glaze, a "peach-reisling glaze", was soooo good I could have eaten it with a spoon (and perhaps I did....but only to make sure it was good enough to slather on the ham).

 Here is a picture of our leftovers instead - the extra ham and rolls have been made into baked sandwiches.  And you can see the roasted carrots and grilled asparagus, which I liked a whole lot, and which others politely ate to be nice.  And of course the family recipe pickled eggs and spinach salad.
Oh, and I also bought a flat of the most outrageously wonderful strawberries from the guy who parks his truck at the intersection up the road and sells fruit (maybe he has a big garden?  or a small farm?  or he's an angel?  who knows?!), and we ate a bunch of them with vanilla ice cream and homemade whipped cream.  Seriously.  It was a great meal - two days in a row.
Last but not least, after a wonderful outdoor church service on a hill (more pastoral goodness) there was our Easter tradition of the egg hunt, which has been dominated by Grace for the past, well, let's say 17 years.  I just think it's cute and sweet and hilarious that they want to continue to go hunt for eggs around the yard.  We use candy-filled plastic eggs, and here's a lesson I learned this year:  don't use chocolate-coated almonds on a warm sunny day, or you will end up washing all the eggs out by hand.  But still, it was fun to watch the kids romping around the yard just like they did when they were little.  (They just had birthdays, turning 20 and 17....WHAT?  How on earth has that happened?)
It sure was good to enjoy our lives as we celebrated the possibility and promise of eternal life.  

Things to Be Thankful for this Spring

How easy it is for us (well, me) to complain!  Last weekend we got 4-and-a-half glorious inches of much-needed rain.  After it had come down in buckets for 2 straight days, our poor dry creek finally started running again.  You would think that I would be thankful (and I was, for a couple of days, there) but yesterday, the hubs was looking at the week's weather forecast (we need to know how to dress for campus!) and the next few days are "70's and sunny", to which my reply was, "Oh, brother."  We actually do need quite a bit more rain.  But hubs responded, "You cannot actually be complaining about that!" (he said it in a very kind way), which made me think.  It seems to me like the weather, and maybe the president (whoever it may be) are two things that half the general population is always complaining about.  So I have decided to play a game called "What Can I Be Thankful For Right Now?"
1. As I type this, I am sitting on the back deck with my son (who is doing his American History homework), one cat, one dog, and two chickens, in the sun, and we are listening to an A's-Dodgers game on the computer.
2. I got to spend 4 days last week in Temecula with other Cru moms and wives from our region, including my friends Melissa (we were randomly placed in the same freshman Bible study in college and our kids call each other 'cousin'),  Vivian (she came on staff with me and Melissa in 1989 and recently survived breast cancer and wrote a book about it  called Warrior In Pink), and Jill (she came on staff with Jamey just before me and was on my team for years in Irvine, and we run together at many conferences).
3. My 'to-do' list for the next day-and-a-half includes the following: go to a golf match (we are watching Jason's friend Beanie - that's a nickname I gave him in the third grade and he still lets me call him that), go to a tennis match (Grace's boyfriend Devin plays for Cal Poly), and go out for lunch at my favorite deli with a coworker.
4. On Saturday, Jason took Max-the-Dog down to the creek for one of his favorite dog activities: retrieving rocks by sticking his entire head under water.
5. There are hyacinths blooming in my front yard.

6. I am making my friend Terry's mac and cheese tonight for dinner.  It has bacon in it.  Everyone is thankful for that.
7. We made it through our third soccer season in a row without having to sit through a downpour.  This is incredible for a winter sport!
8. Did I mention it's baseball season?  I just switched my ring tone from the Monday Night Football theme to "Take Me Out To The Ball Game".  This makes me happy.
9. Saturday night our students showed a video that they made as a tribute to Jamey - I will attempt to post it here on this blog for your enjoyment.  It's a parody of a very horrible song called "What Does The Fox Say?" in case you wondered.
10. In a week, I get to celebrate St Patricks Day by having our whole staff team over for a real Irish dinner and speak in my best Irish brogue for the whole evening.  This is one of my favorite days of the year.
This is proof that if you look hard enough (and it usually isn't very hard), there is plenty to be thankful for at all times.

We Are "Those" Dog Owners

We discovered a couple of weeks ago that our beloved dog Max has (had?) congestive heart failure.  It's not a surprise that he has gotten old and gray (actually, according to the chart in the vet's office, he has passed the 'adult' and 'elderly' stages and has moved into 'geriatric'), and, truth be told, I knew when we got him from the pound that we would in all probability outlive him.  But still, it's not something that you ever really expect.  There's a rumor going around that I am cold and heartless, but this is not always true (except with really mean or dumb people).  I am the little girl who cried in the bathroom for an hour after reading Where The Red Fern Grows (side note: What the heck kind of terrible book is that to put in the children's section of the library?  And what kind of person writes a book like that for children?!).  I still have never watched "Old Yeller" all the way through, and when I read The Yearling out loud to my own kids, I changed the ending so that for years they thought the deer just ran away into the woods.  
So, when we realized what it was (thank you Google) that was causing Max-the-Dog to cough and have trouble breathing, we prepared for the worst as we took him to the vet.  Seriously, we made Jason get up in the wee hours of the morning and say goodbye to him, and with many tears, we drove down to the vet's office.  Max-the-Dog is probably one of the very few pets that actually loves visiting the vet, so he wagged his tail as he struggled into the car, which made it worse of course.  We were fully expecting sweet Dr Hallock to tell us that it was time to put Max down. Tragic.  Heartbreaking.
But, after a blood test and an xray, it was determined that, with new advances in heart medicine, Max-the-Dog can hopefully live another wonderful "6 to 12 months".  A reprieve!  So, Jamey and I have now become "those people" who faithfully give their dog heart medicine (three kinds!) twice a day, in wonderful meaty canned food, no less.  Pricey, yes, but what else can you do for a dog who has faithfully watched over you, your kids, your yard, your walnut tree and your chickens for ten years?
Max of course might be under the illusion that he has already died and gone to dog heaven, since he now gets to eat basically whatever he wants, come inside way more often, and is going on rides to visit his favorite places.  He seems to be back to normal - just this morning he chased a squirrel up the apricot tree, across the electric wire and out of the yard.  So, we are okay with being 'those pet parents' who put little pills in peanut butter sandwiches and make sure they get eaten (actually, while Max-the-Dog does love peanut butter, he eats everything, so I can simply throw the pills on top of his dinner and he will eat every bit very happily) if it means that we get some good extra time with our good boy.

Thoughts on My Third Half Marathon

That's correct, I recently ran my third half marathon.  For someone who never wanted to run more than a mile at track practice, I kind of amazed myself!  It turns out that what I really like about running (at a lovely s-l-o-w pace) is having some alone time to just think and listen to music.  Running around our neighborhood is wonderful, because I get to run mostly past cattle ranches, big yards, gardens, oak trees and fields, among rolling hills.  I am not sure I would run in another setting.  Plus, the fog is a HUGE bonus - I've always kind of loathed running in the sun (did I mention I ran track in Arizona?!  For Pete's sake, what was wrong with me?)  
As I was training for this half marathon, I found myself looking at some articles and blogs that I haven't looked at before.  For example, the training program I used this time was called "Couch Potato to Half Marathon".  I looked up tips on how to deal with aching feet, tight Achilles tendons, and joints without constantly eating ibuprofin (my solution, and I think it might have worked - at least, I ran the whole thing pain-free - was taking Turmeric tablets. You can research for yourself...) The best (?) article was actually recommended to me by someone who will remain nameless (not a family member, but a friend who also runs).  It is from a web site for women over 45 who are training for 10Ks and beyond, and the article is called, I kid you not, "How Not To Poop Yourself While Running".  I am proud to say I did not have any such issues at any point during my training or the race.  The grossest thing I had to do was use my sleeve to wipe my nose.
The best part of the race was seeing my husband at about mile 3, cheering me on from the side of the road, and then of course at the finish line, where I was greeted by my sweet daughter Grace and her great friend Stephanie (who I love), dressed up in hilarious outfits with signs.  They made me laugh so hard I forgot to look at my time (it was 2:20 - I looked on the web site later on) and brought me my post-race drink, my favorite pink fleece (it stayed gloriously foggy and cool the whole way), and my flip flops, and gave me a ride home so I didn't have to take the sweaty shuttle (not the real name, but everyone knows that's what it is).
I am really enjoying not getting up for training runs when it is still dark out, but I really had so much fun that I have already signed up for another run - this time my absolute favorite, the 8-mile Castle To Coast run that starts at Hearst Castle and ends in Cambria and goes right along PCH.  I'm looking forward to that....and to getting a new pair of running shoes!

Home Again Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Our summer travels this year took us to Orange County (4 times), Colorado, New Mexico, and Chicago.  Here are some of my observations:
Some deserts (the Sonora, for example) are really beautiful.  The Mojave is not one of them.
We stopped for lunch in Las Vegas - met some wonderful friends (who live in Henderson, NV) - at a restaurant in a casino.  The burger was great - in fact, the sandwiches were all stacked so tall that they put a steak knife into them to keep them from falling over until they were delivered to the table.  Throughout the whole meal, I kept thinking I could smell a brush fire, and wondered where it was....turns out it was just all of the cigarette smoke.
Things seen along the I-70: Galloway or "Dutch Belted" cattle - one of my favorites, they are the black ones with the white stripe around the middle.  Upon crossing into Utah, a "Speed Limit 80 mph" sign - it brought joy to my Mario-cart-loving soul.  In Vail, at over 8000 feet, in July, snow.  Sadly, along Wolf Creek Pass, thousands of dead pine trees (victims of some kind of bark beetle, I was told), but at the same time, hundreds and hundreds of new, baby pine trees, growing up under the brown ones (surely there is some kind of lesson to be learned there, at another time, when I have a moment to think....).  Also sadly, one 2-liter bottle full of a yellow liquid, discarded along the highway (yuck!).
Needles, California might just be the worst place in the country, and that is hard for me to admit, because I have been to places like Nevada, El Paso, and New Jersey, and because I have a soft spot for Route 66 towns.  If you don't believe me, you should check out the reviews on Yelp.  Let me just say that our feet got dirty from the carpet in the hotel room.
There is a spot on the 101, just north of Los Olivos, that can make me teary almost every time I drive it.  It is Steinbeckian in its grandeur, and makes me grateful I live here every time I see it (rolling hills, stands of oaks, a great old barn, and a pond).
There truly is no place like our neighborhood - which I would like to prove with this photo of our dinner a few days ago, minus the steaks that were on the grill.  All of this food was from either our garden or our neighborhood farmer's market, including the amazing goat cheese made by my neighbor, that we devoured.
Something in the human heart is just always longing for home, I think.

One Sure Way to Feel Great

Last month, my neighbor Monica had an idea.  This isn't uncommon - she has lots of ideas, and most of them are great, and involve some way to make the neighborhood feel more like a community.  She has organized our Garden Farms Farmers' Market, book exchanges, fundraisers, the neighborhood newsletter and directory, Christmas caroling, a parade, and that's not even half the stuff I can think of.  So, I wasn't at all surprised when she had the following idea of a way to encourage and support our neighbor Sue, who is undergoing a round of chemo for cancer: "since Sue loves rhubarb, I would love to recruit some neighbors to make a rhubarb dessert (pie, cobbler, bars, whatever) for her maybe once every week or so for May and June".  This was my week and I decided to make a cobbler (because it seemed easier than pie, and I think I have mentioned before that I am rather lazy).  First, I went down to Monica's and we picked the rhubarb - yes, picked it.  My first time - and might I mention that one of Monica's rhubarb plants is over 40 years old and is still going strong.  We sliced it off at the stalk with a knife, then removed the leaf (poisonous; you can't even feed it to goats, so you know it's bad!).  Then I brought it home and chopped it up and looked up a recipe for rhubarb cobbler (I used the one from thepioneerwoman.com because I like her other recipes).  Then I cooked the rhubarb until it was soft.  Then I panicked, because this variety of rhubarb is green, and I thought that a green cobbler would look really weird, so I threw in some blueberries I had, and added a couple of drops of red food coloring (I tell you, that helped so much!!).  Bonus - I had enough of the fruit to make a small second cobbler for us for dessert tonight (there it is in the picture, along with the gorgeous peonies I got on Sunday for my anniversary).

Eating this wonderful cobbler, with vanilla ice cream, was not the best part of the day, however.  The best part was when I took the cobbler down to Sue's house and she came to the door, bald, wearing a dress, and hugged me three times in about two minutes, and showed the cobbler to her whole family, and thanked me over and over.  Seriously, I would like to propose that one way to feel better, if you are sad, anxious, or upset, is to do something for someone else.  It doesn't even have to be a big thing, and it can be done anonymously, too.  But truly, doing something as simple and easy as making a dessert has made my day (or two, or week)!  And of course, I am reminded once again what a blessing it is to live here in my amazing and wonderful neighborhood.

riding the bus

Jason has had his license for about 6 weeks now, and in an effort to be cool parents, we are trying to let him drive to school whenever we can.  So....a couple of days a week, I have been hitching a ride down to Cal Poly with Jamey, and then riding the bus home later on.  It's actually pretty convenient, because the bus picks me up right in front of the student union, and then drops me off at the corner of my street, with only one or two stops in between.  And it's cheaper to ride the bus than it is to park on campus for the day (Jamey parks along the street for free and walks onto campus, but I am far too lazy to do that, so I usually pay to park in the garage.  I justify it by carrying a lot of stuff).
Not being a frequent bus rider (I rode it around SLO exactly once, about 10 years ago, when Jason and another friend were learning about their town for kindergarten), I have been learning a few things:
First, when your bus route is pretty much a winding, uphill road, it is probably not the best idea to try to get some work done on your ipad.  It can make you feel really sick.  Ugh.
Second, because the bus needs to go really slow as it heads uphill, you get a chance to look around and notice things.  For example, there is a little gated road that goes off to the right about halfway up "the grade", and it looks like there is a beautiful ranch back in there.  Or at least a cool camping spot beside a creek.
Another benefit of taking the bus is the smug feeling you get from knowing that you are saving gas and being 'green'.

And because I have been walking from the bus stop to my house, I have been passing by my neighbors' yard, and I noticed the other day that their mama goat had two tiny, adorable kids in her pen.  This is the second time she has given birth to twins.  And as I was passing by, they hopped up onto the picnic table and asked me to please take their picture (in goat language.  Which I speak, actually.  I'm like Dr Doolittle).  My neighbor makes the most fantastic feta cheese from his goats' milk, by the way.  And his goats travel around to other neighbors' yards all summer and keep their weeds down (this is a great service, since we are expecting a bad fire season this year).
So, all in all, riding the bus is turning out to be a pretty good deal.

Hippie Chicks

For whatever reason, I cannot watch the ends of close football or basketball games (or races, or other sporting events).  I can listen, but it makes me really nervous to watch.  So I spent a lot of this year's NCAA March Madness listening to the broadcast, but messing around on the internet.  When I want to waste time on my computer, I often turn to Pinterest.  For those of you who don't know what Pinterest is, it's a web site where you can, on the one hand, find some great recipes, decorating ideas, and household and gardening tips....on the other hand, it's an invitation to covet other people's homes, clothes, and bodies.  

I searched the topic "chickens" and up popped a great web site (Grit.com) with lots of ideas on how to keep your hens healthy and happy.  For example, I learned that putting a half a teaspoon of cider vinegar in my chickens' water can keep away parasites and mites. I was happy to try it, and I am really really happy to report that not only is it keeping my hens happy (I don't think they actually had any parasites or mites before, anyway), but in 24 hours the vinegar in the water had actually cleaned the water container and made it look brand new!! There was also a list of fresh herbs that you can place in the nesting boxes, and the effect of each one.  For example, catnip is a sedative, lemon balm is a stress reliever, and fennel is a laying stimulant - who knew?!  Well, now, I have lots of herbs in the garden and around the house, so I thought, "What the heck?" and put some rose petals (vitamin C), lavender (stress reducer and insecticide), basil (mucus membrane health, whatever that is!), and rosemary (respiratory health) in my nesting boxes.  Apparently, my hens are not into herbs, because less than an hour later they had kicked all of the herbs out of the boxes and all over the ground.  They didn't even eat any, and that's saying something, because these girls eat any old bread product, grass, coffee grounds when they can get them, and even cobwebs.  But that's okay, because they seem pretty happy and relaxed to me, and we have more eggs than we can eat (clearly I need to do some baking!).

My Unsolicited Advice to Other Baseball Fans

My brother Charles, son Jason and I had a great time up in the Bay Area at an A's game.  Since I can't afford (or...won't pay for) seats right behind home plate, I like to sit in the left field bleachers to maybe catch a home run ball (on this day, Torii Hunter hit one about ten rows behind us).  The Oakland bleachers are a fantastic place to watch a game, because the fans really get into it.  The 'flag wavers' sit there, as do the drummers, the vuvuzela blowers, and the guy with the bell.  No kidding, he brings a boat's bell and bungee cords the thing to the front of the bleachers.  He even warned everyone around, "I'm gonna be ringin' this thing a lot!"  There was a cute family in front of us with a baby appropriately decked out in A's booties and a matching hat which fell down over its eyes (but I don't think it was watching the game that much anyway).
And then....there was this guy, two rows down.  Green-Suit Guy.  I have seen these in blue (at an away high school football game) and in orange (at a home high school basketball game), but I've never been this close to one.  Obviously, it takes a certain amount of commitment and loyalty (and guts!) to don this spandex suit, which I respect.  I also greatly appreciate that he wore A's pajama bottoms over the spandex pants.  And he was really entertaining, especially when he looked up the stats of the other team's left fielder on his smart phone in order to better heckle the poor guy.  But I would like to give him just a couple of handy tips, and let this also be a lesson to any of you who might at some point wear one of these things at some other sporting event.
First, be sure to mind the weather, because although these things look really cool from afar, if it's, say, sunny and 80 degrees, just know that you are going to start to sweat - probably behind your ears and around your neck - and people around you could be totally grossed out.  Especially if they are also observant enough to notice the tiny little hairs that poke through the fabric all over your head and neck.  Consider sitting AWAY from everyone else, because this is a sight truly better enjoyed from a distance.
Second, if you are billing yourself as a 'superfan', as I would assume from your attire that you are, it's probably not the best idea to actually take a nap in your seat in the 7th inning, OR to leave in the 8th, when your team is down.  In my opinion, real fans just don't do that. I myself saw an Indians game in 2001 when the Indians were down by 12 runs and came back in the last two innings to win!  And 5 of those runs came with two out in the ninth!!  (Don't ask why I was watching an Indians game....I have no idea.  It just happens - watching random baseball games is a recurring problem for me).  Unless, of course, you are struggling with heat stroke because you sat out in the blazing sun for a few hours.  Then maybe it's okay.