Go, Mom, Go!

Mary Anne is currently out in California training for the Melges 24 World Championships! (How many people have a gorgeous, glamorous and tough-and-nails mom who does such awesome things?!?) Here's an excerpt from one of her recent updates:

A morning of tacking drills on Tuesday... 200 tacks... oh boy! It was really good! Before we started practice, we sailed by huge kelp bed, which is amazing. It looks like trees growing up from the bottom and waving just under the water, waiting to catch your keel and stop you. I really need to keep my eye out for that stuff! We came closer to shore for practice, as it was really smoking about a mile off shore, and the seals were going crazy around the pier. It sounded like we were sailing in the zoo.

We have now moved the boat to San Francisco. The rest of the crew arrives this afternoon, so we practice for short time today with all day on the water tomorrow. We will be racing three races on both Saturday and Sunday in the Berkeley Olympic Circle area. This is the Pacific Coast Championships, and all the boats that are really serious about Worlds will be racing this event as a warm-up. We are very excited to finally be racing and getting a good work out on the water with those boats that should be the top contenders!

Check out the photos from the regatta. Go, Mom, go!

Ottermania!

It's no secret: As much as I adore nearly all aminals, if I had to pick a favorite, it would be otters. (Rabbits are a very close second, in part because they actually pass through my backyard sometimes.) So because otters don't hang out under my pine tree, where do I get my otter fix? That's what this posting is all about.

Emmet and Capers

While the Minnesota Zoo doesn't specifically acknowledge him as such, this is Emmet.

He's a North American River Otter whom M adopted for me as a birthday gift. There's a photo of him on our fridge and on my desk at work. It's to the point that our friends who take their kids to the zoo will drop me a line afterward to let me know how Emmet is doing.

Separately, the Minnesota Zoo has announced that one of the main attractions of their new "Russia’s Grizzly Coast" exhibit (opening in 2008) will be an orphaned otter pup named Capers (right). Seriously, can you believe how adorable he is? Sugar shock, I tell ya.

According to the zoo's Web site, Capers was rescued in Alaska when he was two weeks old. He was immediately taken to the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward -- which Mason visited on his trip around the world in 2000 -- where he was taken care of by the rehabilitation staff. Capers then came to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, and from there came to the MN Zoo; staff members from both institutions are now working together to teach him to "be an otter." Visit the MN Zoo Web site to learn more about Capers and Russia's Grizzly Coast.

Sasha and Jasper
These two are at home with me. The photo to the right is sort of what they used to look like until they got snuggled too hard -- these days, they're a little squished. Do I feel bad about falling asleep with these two at my age? Nope. :) When I'm sick, M brings them downstairs to watch TV with me on the couch. They even go on business trips with me.

AND, as you can see from the photo to the left, sometimes they come out to play when we have friends over and drink a bunch of wine and spend too much time acquiring ridiculous tunes online (the theme from "He-Man," anyone?)

Cute Overload!
A newer source of otter joy for me has been a blog called Cute Overload! (Yes, there really is an exclamation point in the name, like "Jeopardy!") M sent me a CO posting one day when I was really cranky; I think it was part pick-me-up, part joke. Little did he know that I would become a full-blown CO addict! In addition to the outstanding photos of rabbits, puppies, hedgehogs, etc. (supplemented by copy that is equal parts smart and silly), CO frequently posts video clips. In the last few weeks, two otter video clips have been posted: one of a Sasha-type teaching a Jasper-type how to swim, and one of (can you believe it?) two otters napping and holding hands. It's so adorable that it's almost annoying.

Almost.

Gardeners Aren’t Born, They’re Made (by Ugly Backyards and Stressful Jobs)

Last summer (2006), I was bitten by the gardening bug. How did this happen? One Saturday in May, Mason said, “Wanna put in a couple of tomato plants?” We hit Mother Earth for some choice heirloom varieties, dug up some sod, popped in the plants, and I was hooked. I’m not sure why (let’s face it -- I’m not the most outdoorsy person ever), but I was and am a gardening addict.

Weeds (Not the Kind on Showtime)
It was perfect timing, in some ways. In May of’06, the backyard looked like crap, and there’s no mystery as to the reason: We took possession of the house on the same freakin' day that M started law school in 2003. We hustled over the course of about ten days to get the interior into presentable shape (Mom, Phil, Steve, Ron, Aaron and Jill will recall hours upon hours of painting), but once school got going, we didn’t have tons of time to devote to the backyard.

You can’t tell the extent of the crappiness from this photo, but dang, the backyard was pretty bad: random elevated concrete pad by the backdoor, chain-link fence all the way around, a big-ol’ clothesline kinda thingy, and as I mention above, lots and lots of weeds encircling the whole shebang.



It started out bad enough (the house had been sitting empty for four months when we moved in), but over a few years, the boring expanse of unleveled grass that was the yard become absolutely surrounded a border of gargantuan weeds. Ugh, I feel bad for our neighbors at the time!

Gardening as Therapy
As you may know, 2006 was also the year my job became so stressful for me that I quit in September without having another job lined up. (It’s all worked out really well, by the way, but the summer leading up to that decision was hellacious.) At some point when we were putting in those four tomato plants in May, something clicked for me. This activity had that same relaxing/energizing yin-yang quality that I’d found in dance class. Plus, it included all those things that your mother always advocated when you were a kid wanting to hang out inside and watch cartoons. You know: fresh air, sunshine, yadda yadda. It felt great.

Between loving the therapy of dirt between my fingers and the fact that the yard needed all this work, I was thrilled to throw myself into it. I had no clue what I was doing, but I dug up lots of sod (with Mason’s help), stuck stuff in the ground, asked a ton of questions at the nursery, and learned by reading and doing. In addition to making lots of mistakes, I also encountered some wonderful surprises:

• The Edins, who lived in the house for about 50 years before we bought it from their estate, had planted a number of things that hung in there despite our neglect of the yard, including two beautiful and well-established peony bushes that have probably been there for decades.
• There was no denying the eyesore of the chain-link fence, so some of my earliest purchases were perennial vines, like parthenocissus quinquefolia and tricuspidata (that’s Virginia creeper and Boston ivy, but I’m working at learning all the botanical names). However, it turns out that annual vines are a wonderful way to speed up the process, and three thunbergia alatas (black-eyed Susan vines) did a terrific job in making the fence much easier on the eyes.
• Surprises in the form of gifts, item 1: My dad had given us a very generous Lowe’s gift card as a house-warming gift in ‘03. We’d been hanging on to it for a while because Lowe’s wasn’t yet in Minnesota at that time, but they’d announced that they’d be arriving soon. Lowe’s and behold: the Shakopee location was open by last summer and I turned that gift card into allllllll kinds of wonderful backyard tools and toys, my favorite of which has got to be the hammock.
• Surprises in the form of gifts, item 2: M’s parents, the ever-awesome Ds, had been asking us for some time what we’d like for a wedding present, and we never had a great answer, although we vaguely discussed patio furniture. Eventually, they gave us a very nice check in a card that read, “Happy Wedding! Happy House! Happy Patio Furniture! Happy Everything!” We took it to heart and got a fantastic wrought-iron patio set.
• Another great surprise: M got pretty excited about the whole backyard makeover, as well. Granted, he wasn’t quite as interested in what was rapidly becoming a perennial border, but he relished the opportunity to blow off steam by installing a truly beautiful patio with our dear friend, Ron.

By late September, the backyard was glorious, just in time for summer to be winding down. We enjoyed every last temperate outdoor day: lounging in the hammock, watching the birds and butterflies feast on everything in bloom, having weekend-morning coffee on “the veranda” (which used to be a concrete pad but is now quite stylish), and having the cool new neighbors over for dinners on the patio.

Of course, the more I learned, the more I realized how much I did wrong that first year. And so, it continues…

Why "Sparklegirl?"

If my dad were writing this posting, he'd begin something like, "The year was 1962." You know you would, Dad! :)

I don't actually remember what the year was, but the name "Sparklegirl" emerged from one of those conversations wherein folks discuss their superhero alter ego. (I'm amazed at how many people I've talked to that have had this exact conversation.) Sparklegirl's super-powers are:

a) The ability to create a magic snow that dissipates conflict. You'd think that, being fairly loud and opinionated, I wouldn't have a major aversion to conflict, but somehow I do. It doesn't prevent me from advocating for things I feel strongly about, but it does make me tend to avoid needlessly argumentative situations, e.g., conversations about politics. (One friend calls me a "political recluse" -- I stay informed and well-read, but I don't like to discuss politics with others.)

So the idea is that superhero Sparklegirl, when she sees an unnecessary (whatever that means) conflict/dispute/argument, could create a sparkly, magic snowfall that eliminates it. As soon as the snow touches you, you stop fighting. But in a good way, like not squabbling with stressed-out family members at the holidays, as opposed to the givingupallhopeoftriumphingoverevil kind of way.

Tangent: Snow (the non-magical kind) sort of has this effect on me, anyway. Maybe it's because I grew up in warm locales, but I get positively giddy during a beautiful snowfall.

2) The ability to fly. This part's important, too, because otherwise how can she get to where the conflict is? Clearly, Sparklegirl has to be able to take her snow on the road to prevent needless disputes or clashes. Plus, how cool would it be to fly?

So at the risk of making myself sound like a great big wuss (it's really not that, I just like it when everyone gets along), that's the background on the whole Sparklegirl name.

Do you have an alter ego with super-powers? If not, you should get one -- they're fun.

Sparklegirl gets a kiss from Pilot at the St. Paul Winter Carnival.

Getting Started

Why am I blogging? Is it the appeal of contributing my thoughts/ideas to the general mass of schtuff that is the Internet? Nope, it's the fact that one of the first Web sites I visit every morning is http://addieray.blogspot.com/.

Addie is my dearsweetbabygirlniece. (Tangent: Somehow, I'm never able to refer to her in conversation as simply "my niece." It's always "my babygirl niece," which is going get pretty ridiculous when she's no longer a baby, particularly since it's pretty obvious that, as a niece, she's a girl.)

ANYway. Addie lives about a million miles away (okay, Seattle’s not quite that far) with my wonderful brother and sister-in-law, whom you can just tell were born to be the World's Best Parents. I miss her terribly, but checking her blog every day helps me feel a lot closer to her.

For that reason, I started wondering if the whole blog thing might be a good fit for staying connected to my family. (This is despite the fact that the primary functions of the blogosphere these days seem to be a) polarizing the nation and b) recapping baseball games -- the latter of which I heartily approve, BTW. But I digress. You’ll get used to that.) After all, we're a scatted bunch: Washington, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, etc. And because I'm not always as good about picking up the phone as I should be (or returning non-work e-mails, for that matter), this seemed like it was worth a shot. I'm guessing that you aren't dying to know about all the landscaping I did over the weekend or whatever else I post about, but on the other hand, maybe this blog means that I won't seem so far away to the people I love. :)

P.S. Speaking of Addie, here we are. Evidently, Aunt Laura is pretty good at gorilla noises, which -- at least on this particular day -- were amusing.