Kathryn

Let it Snow

December 2, 2016 by Kathryn 5 Comments

I didn’t plan for my first post on this blog to be so controversial but I think this needs saying – I’m hoping for snow next week.

Because I’m Canadian.

And a freelance writer who doesn’t have to commute anywhere further than the Ticketyboo bag in my pantry.

And because snowmen.

When you’re having trouble getting across the WooDu after work in time to take your son to Karate practice in Woodinville, just sit there parked in traffic in our beautiful valley, smile, and think, “It’s Kathryn’s birthday this week and she loves the snow. Smiley emoji with heart eyes.”

Cliff Mass thinks there may be snow next week. So that means there’s at least a 3.6% chance.

Snow is so rare in Duvall that when it comes, it’s like fluffy white magic sprinkles are turning everything into a Christmas wonderland. And I like fluff and magic and sprinkles. Also Christmas. Also wonderlands. You get the point.

Snow wasn’t a huge deal where I grew up in Calgary, where I went to school in Utah, or when I lived in Denver.

But it’s a big deal in our town.

Winter storm – December 2008.

So much snow fell in Duvall followed by such low temperatures that we turned Stephens/Bruett/152^nd/The Big Hill into a snowboard hill.

(It should be noted that no one ever calls it Bruett, unless their name is google maps, or they are intent on causing trouble. It is not marked as Bruett on the street itself. We will be digging into this in detail in a future post.)

Back to snowpocalypse and the impromptu snowboard hill.

I don’t snowboard, but I do eat Thai food, and The Thai Restaurant does not close. Not ever, from what I’ve observed. So, a neighbor and I got into laundry baskets at the top of The Big Hill and rode to the bottom of the hill alongside the youngsters to enjoy some curry.

We also picked up a few necessities at the Duvall Family Grocer and then hauled our catch back up the hill with bungee cords attached to our baskets. These are the days of joy and gladness.

Like most Decembers, that year contained my birthday and Christmas. And I was a little stir crazy not being able to get my mini-van out of the driveway for the holidays.

But my husband worked from home, the kids’ school was canceled and it ended up one of the best weather event-related “vacations” we’ve had since we’ve lived in Duvall.

There have been many.

And now we have all-wheel drive which means we can get out of our driveway. And up and down hills. We can go wherever we want. We just can’t always choose where we stop.

Stay warm next week. And if you see me zooming past you in a laundry basket, please don’t run me over in your Hummer.

For school closure info, go here.

For road closures, go here.

For deliciousness supplies from a great local business, go here.

For curry via laundry basket pilgrimage, go here.

For cheap sleds so you don’t have to scratch up your laundry basket, go here.

My Responsibility – Teachers Over Moms

October 6, 2016 by Kathryn Leave a Comment

I’m in the process of copying over posts from my personal blogs that share a little of our small town Duvall charm. They were all originally published on either DropsofAwesome.com or DaringYoungMom.com. This is one of those posts. It’s about a local teacher.

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Wanda was doing her homework on Monday which was, and I kid you not, telling her stuffed animals about her classroom job. The school is experimenting with moving toward a “no homework” model by giving them little tasks. These are tasks that in the past would have been undertaken without assignment by any normal human child back in the days before they all became tablet-slurping cyborgs.

So now we get lists of things she can do to act like a kid and communicate with “her stuffed animals” (Translation: parents) about what’s happening in the classroom.

With the tasks, comes a worksheet and on that worksheet is a line to write the student’s name.

Wanda looked at the sheet.

“Oh,” she said, “We’re supposed to put our name at the top.”

I smiled and nodded and kept working on digging through my email.

She held her hand out to me, palm-forward.

“No,” she said in a lofty tone, “I need to do it. It’s my responsibility.”

Ummm…okay. No one’s stopping you. I looked after her as she lifted her shoulders into her best possible posture, tossed her hair, and marched off to get a pencil.

I kept on with my email.

“You see, mom? I have a new trait. It’s called responsibility. We’re studying it at school.”

“That is awesome. Good for you.”

All day, she was focused on her responsibility.

I helped her find her missing shoes.

“Thanks for helping mom. But next time I should probably do it myself because it’s my responsibility.”

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Laylee reached for one of Wanda’s dishes after dinner.

“NO!! That’s my responsibility.”

You’d think I had never once or ten THOUSAND times told Wanda to clear her own place at the table. No. This was new news. Her teacher had given her a new trait. For October. And that trait, my fellow Americans, is a little thing we like to call RE-SPON-SI-BILITY!

Maybe if I had a teaching degree I would be qualified to give her traits. Maybe.

The older kids, of course, found this hilarious and sweet. When Laylee taught our Family Night lesson about keeping journals, she made sure to look at Wanda with a grave expression and say, “We need to write in our journals. It’s our… responsibility.”

Wanda perked right up and nodded solemnly. She is now on the journal train.

So I started praising every good thing Wanda did as evidence of how responsible she was. I even noticed Laylee do something good and I called her out.

“Look how responsible Laylee is being! Nice job!”

Wanda looked perplexed.

“Wait,” she said, “Laylee has traits too?!”

Yes. Yes she does. But she’s not in Mrs. Boogaloo’s first grade class! I wonder where she got them!?

Post-Op Grocery Shop

August 25, 2016 by Kathryn Leave a Comment

The worst day for me after my surgery came when I went for my check-up a week later and the doctor gave me a clean bill of health. My blood count was up a bit. My incisions were healing nicely and he said the dreaded words, “You can resume normal activities as you feel able.”

This sounds like good news, but to me it was horrible because it turned on my guilt faucet. When I was on bedrest, I couldn’t move. I just couldn’t. Doctor’s orders. But as soon as he said I could listen to my body and decide, I found myself feeling guilty for not being 100%. I was still dizzy when I stood up. My incisions were still painful when I sat upright for more than a few minutes at a time and even walking for short distances left me weak and out of breath.

But I felt bad because I wasn’t up and doing everything. It’s amazing how hard we are on ourselves, right? The heck?!

I told myself it was fine, to listen to my body and take it easy, but it was a real struggle.

Hello. My name is Kathryn. And I have a hard time being nice to myself consistently without conscious effort. I’ve gotten better over the years, especially the last few, but it’s still a struggle and I still have to be mindful about it.
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So it turned out we needed groceries (re: kids eat food all the days) but I was worried about walking around the grocery store. I’d had several friends offer to pick things up for me at the store, but I thought of a better idea.

The kids could do it!

Isn’t that a good solution to most problems in life?

Newly free of the narcotics, I drove the kids to the store. We had a pep-talk where I told them about looking for brands and sizes with the best price. I took them down the cereal aisle and showed them how to look at the price per ounce and see if a bigger box might be a better value even if the price tag was bigger.

I refreshed their memory on how to pick produce.

I told them that vacation as coming so the budget was tight and I asked them to stick to the list unless they saw something they thought we actually needed for a good price. If that happened, they were to come and ask me.

On the list, I indicated that they could choose one treat that they all agreed on.

If they got along and showed good grocery manners, they could have a free bakery cookie at the end.

Then I planted myself in a reclined position in one of the comfy chairs in the pharmacy waiting room and read a great western novel for book club.

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My 13, 11, and 6-year-old navigated the grocery store beautifully and had a great time doing it.

They came and found me with questions like, “You wrote down red bell peppers but the green ones are so much cheaper. Is there a reason you really need red?” and “We want to get a box of Cheez-Its for our treat but there’s a deal where they are way cheaper if you buy three boxes. Can we please buy three?”

They made hard choices and proudly told me about how they refused to buy the salad dressing brand I specified because it was way too expensive and there was a store-brand alternative that looked just as good.

Seeing the pride on their faces, even though one of them wouldn’t admit she’d had a good time, I wondered why I hadn’t done something like this before.

And when we got to the long lines at the end, I asked the kids to pay for the groceries. They balked. Using my credit card was taking things a bit too far for them. I told them I could really use their help and asked them to try it because I didn’t think I could stand up in line that long.

Then a sweet lady overheard us and asked if we would like to take our massive load of groceries and cut in front of her in line. Drops of Awesome for kind strangers. I meet them all time!

Dead Animal O’Clock

May 12, 2016 by Kathryn Leave a Comment

I have a thing about dead animals. They make me cry.

When I’m driving down the road and I see a deer carcass or a dead bird smashed to the asphalt, its wing flapping in the wind, I gasp and tears well up. I hate to see animals hurt or killed.

It’s not like I’m a huge animal lover. I am not a cat lady and as I’ve been working on the edits for the third Drops of Awesome book this week, my editor needed to point out that I hadn’t included any questions about pets in a book that asks questions to help the user write her autobiography. It just didn’t occur to me.

But I can’t stand the thought of a dead animal.

Even though I passionately hate the mice who sneak into our garage, it is gut-wrenching to me to dispose of their bodies from the traps. I fall apart.

So, today when I saw a large squirrel dead but still perfectly formed lying in the middle of the road next to Wanda’s bus stop, I lost it a little. It. Was lost. My friend Stephanie and I had just returned from a bike ride and we had no kids with us. I knew that as soon as they got home on the bus, they’d see the poor squirrel and I wanted to spare them that trauma. Even worse, what if a truck drove by and smashed it to pieces and we had to walk by it’s caked-on guts every day for the next six months? I couldn’t bear it.

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I told Stephanie I’d dispose of it if she’d provide the shovel and moral support.

Then, just as I was approaching the beast, she suggested that maybe he was just stunned and as soon as I touched him he might jump up and run toward me.

This was not helpful.

We decided on a two-part approach. First I would poke said beastie with the tip of the shovel. If he made no movement, I would proceed to phase 2, wherein I would push him with the shovel across the road and into the drainage ditch for the coyotes to mange.

She started recording.

There was something about the soft feeling of the shovel touching the squirrel’s belly that sent a shiver through my whole body. It wasn’t pretty. I asked her to stop recording.

But she started again.

And caught my finest hour in pixels.

Because that’s how heroes DO!

I thought it was over.

The kids hopped off the bus and I headed home and retired to the solace of my favorite chair in the corner by my favorite window, working on work and watching Wanda and her friend as they played outside.

When what should fly past my ear but a giant bug. No. Not a bug. A bird. A freaking bird was inside my living room.

It landed on the window sill a few inches from me, flapping it’s wings frantically and slamming into the window over and over again.

I screamed and dropped my water bottle on the floor, wetness spilling everywhere. The bird also started spreading “wetness” all over my window sill. Bird poop. In my living room.

I called Dan for moral support but he was in a meeting. I took some semi-hysterical video tracking the bird.

“Girls,” I yelled outside, “You left the door open and now there’s a bird in the house.”

I heard my neighbor laugh from her house next door.

“Do you need my help?” she asked.

“YES!”

“Seriously? Okay. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

While I was waiting for her, I closed all the blinds in the house except the ones on the window where the bird was thrashing and opened the front door to entice him out. I grabbed a broom and started shooing the bird toward the screened-in part of the window, thinking if he was near the screen, I could push it out and let him free.

I can’t adequately describe the feeling of adrenaline that was coursing through my body as I worked to get this crazy bird out of my house, a bird who moved sporadically, frequently startling me, and who I knew could fly up in my face at any moment, freaking me out and very likely pecking the flesh from my eyes in a Hitchcockian display of terror.

It’s like that feeling you get when you’re poking a dead squirrel in the middle of the road with your shovel, knowing he could jump up, run along the handle of your shovel and start climbing up and down your face while you scream and flail around like a psychobot.

After I moved the bird where I wanted him, I put down the broom so I could have two hands free to remove the screen. As I did this, he dropped out of sight behind my long, dark curtains. I quickly closed those curtains as well, those curtains which hang in an area behind the end table, an area that has become the dumping ground for my church bag, the kids’ piano books, and a bunch of other stuff. Arg.

With the blinds all shut, the living room had grown dim.

The bird was in the mess. In the dark. And he’d gone silent.

No more flapping.

No more pecking.

Silence.

Did he die of fright and fall into my church bag to fester? My neighbor had arrived by this point and she helped me pull items one by one out of my bag, looking for a dead bird.

Nothing.

In the dim light we moved the chair. The end table. The piano.

Nothing.

Ever.

We never found the bird.

I see the writing on the wall. At some point in the next couple of weeks, I will move a cushion or a piano book and BAM! Dead rotting creepy bird carcass!! It’s an exciting game we’re playing here.

My neighbor asked if there was ever really a bird or if I was possibly losing my mind. After SquirrelGate 2016 earlier this morning, I almost doubted myself.

“But no,” I told her, “I have video proof of the bird.”

Then I showed her this.

A minute of me hysterically trying to creep up on a bird that never quite makes it into the video.

Good proof, right?

She looks at me.

“It must be on the other video.”

And here it is.

So the bird is real. And the squirrel is real. And the terror is real. I wanted to find the bird so badly at first, but I’m at a point where I don’t so much want to find it now. Ever.

They say these things happen in threes. I don’t think that’s possible. Because if I have another run-in with a helpless and/or deceased animal today, I will perish as well. And then there will be four dead animals.

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The Funny Thing About Softball

April 28, 2016 by Kathryn Leave a Comment

When I agreed to coach Wanda’s itty bitty softball team, I had no idea what I was in for. I signed up under duress and with serious stress and doubts about my ability to pull it off.

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It turns out that all you need to be a softball coach at this age is patience, a bit of organizational ability, and love for the girls. And dang. They are so lovable. I’m a bit blown away by how much I’m enjoying managing this team. It doesn’t hurt that the parents are great and jump in and cover for me where I’m weak… like in anything that relates to doing the sportings.

One of my favorite things about coaching is watching the girls learn and process this new sport. Here are a few of the highlights from last week’s games:

They’re learning to bat a live ball for the first time and they’re hitting more than I expected but it’s still very new and often when they do it looks like they hit more by accident than on purpose.

Last week one of my cute girls was up there swinging the bat, and when the ball hit her bat, she was so shocked she didn’t even run. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes got huge, and when we finally convinced her to run to first, she ran all the way there with biggest smile on her face and then covered her mouth both hands. Total shock and awe.

The way the game works at this age, every girl gets to bat every inning until she hits the ball. Then we retire the inning. So, while most girls are only allowed to advance one base per hit, the last batter gets to circle the bases for a home run every time. On the last batter, the defensive players are supposed to throw the ball to home and then the catcher can tag everyone out as the empty the bases.

We’d never practiced with a catcher before our first game so the concept of catching the ball at home and then tagging girls out is totally new and each girl, as she takes her turn as catcher seems highly confused by this.

When Wanda got her first turn as catcher, our pitcher threw her the ball after the last batter. Wanda looked around for it, which is hard in all that gear, picked up the ball, dropped it in the ball bucket and went back to her position behind the plate to chillax. All the parents are yelling, “Tag her Wanda! Tag her with the ball,” and Wanda’s looking at us like we’ve lost our minds.

Another cute player figure out that she needed to tag the girls out but the girls did not want to be tagged, so they ended up running in zig-zags and circles back and forth over the baseline and around home plate in a crazy game of tag.

My absolute favorite catcher play came, however, when one little girl got impatient for her outfielders to retrieve the ball that was hit.

“Tag em with a ball?” she thought, “Hmm. Why wait for that specific ball when I’ve got a whole bucket full of balls right next to me.” Like any good problem solver, she just grabbed a new ball and started tagging girls out with it. This reminds me of my mom keeping an extra spoon in her chair when we played spoons and pulling it out when she needed to. Genius.

Now, after one game Wanda proudly informed me that she had learned how to eat sunflower seeds at the games. I was surprised by this pronouncement because sunflower seed eating is actually a pretty advanced skill. Nope. Wanda has it nailed. Video evidence below.

All About that Base…ball

April 19, 2016 by Kathryn Leave a Comment

BASEBALL IS NOW!!!

At the beginning of each calendar year, there comes a point, and I never know when it will be, when I get an email that essentially says, “BASEBALL IS NOW!!!”

What this means is, “You signed your child up for baseball six months ago, not knowing when it would be, and then you planned your schedule and moved on with your life. But starting tomorrow you will have baseball practices and games 3-5 times per week in various towns all over the valley and you will no longer be in any way in control of your family’s schedule. You will not eat normal family dinner for the next 4 months.”

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And we do this every single year because, flying in the face of everything I thought I knew about genetics, I have a kid who adore sports, particularly baseball.

This year is especially special because not only is Magoo playing, but Wanda is six and it’s her first year playing softball. And she’s not the only one playing softball. Due to an utterly desperate coaching situation in our little corner of Little League, I am managing and coaching her team.

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Have I ever played softball before? No.

Have I ever touched a softball before? No.

Have I ever watched a single game of softball being played? Not so much.

Am I much more qualified to direct a theater production, conduct a band, or coach a team of mathletes? Yes.

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But I do know how to dial up the YouTube. And I know how to interact with kindergarteners. And I have great parent support and the sweetest assistant coach ever, Coach Laylee. So I’m doing okay so far. Our games start soon and then we’ll see exactly HOW okay.

Not only am I… ahem… coaching, we also decided to sponsor Magoo’s team this year. I have a business license in Washington State as an LLC for my writing and coaching work. So when the team asked if any of us had a business who’d like to sponsor the team and have our business name printed on the back, I could not resist.

Meet Team Drops of Awesome.

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While other kids go around with the names of local restaurants and hardware stores printed across their backs, our kids wear the banner of Awesome.

I love to cheer for them but my cheering is at best awkward. At the moment, I’m working to use phrases that don’t in any way come naturally to me to support the kids as they try to do the good baseballing.

When other parents call out things like, “Good cut,” and “Way to get a piece of it,” they sound cool and sports-like. When I call out those things, I feel like I’m dressing my vocabulary up in a baseball mom costume and the costume doesn’t fit so well and I sound silly.

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One seasoned baseball mom recently told me it’s all about yelling things with authority. It doesn’t really matter what you say. You just have to commit and sound like you know what you’re talking about. So here are a few I’ve come up with this season and I’m excited to try them out.

“That was high quality cutting!”

“Your arm is nice!”

“You swing with great strength!”

“Throw the ball with more hardness!”

“Knock it to Sammammish!”

“I like the way your bat touched that ball even though it didn’t go the right direction to allow you to run to a base!”

Okay, that last one’s a bit long but I think it gets the point across nicely. I could also go uber short with things like, “BOOM!” “Ska-DOINK!”

I’ll fine tune it and let you know.

Besides vocab choices, the main concerns I have during baseball season are how to feed my kids when we’re at baseball from 4:30-8pm and there’s no eating allowed in the dugout, how to get stains out of white pants that are worn exclusively for times when you plan to slide and roll around in the dirt and grass, and how to prepare for every possible weather situation.

We’re wet and freezing. We’re sizzling and baking in the sun. Sometimes we do both of those things during a single game. So I bring umbrellas and sunscreen, snacks and water bottles, sunhats and parkas. This is the fun of baseball in the Northwest.

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Concert Despair

November 20, 2015 by Kathryn Leave a Comment

Do you ever feel sad, angry, or bored when forced to sit through a middle school band concert? When the music starts, do you instantly feel thirsty or need a restroom break? Do your counting skills become weak when faced with the overwhelming task of counting down songs on a musical program, causing you to ask your mom over and over again, “Just one more, right?” only to have her respond that there are still seven songs left, as she told you at the beginning of this song and please stop talking because we’re at a concert?

This is called Concert Despair and it can happen to anyone. Usually more pronounced in young children, CD can also be experienced by teens and even adults. Adults whose uterine-fruit are not currently performing are especially vulnerable, as is frequently the case with parents of eighth graders while the sixth grade band is performing or the parents of non-jazz-band members when the jazz band plays and gives ten-measure solos to Every. Single. Child. in the band.

Symptoms include hunger, thirst, loud whining, bad posture, limp noodle disorder, numb bum, insatiable desire to use electronic devices, inability to count down from ten, and sudden brain flashes to all the things remaining on your to-do list.

If you or someone you love is experiencing Concert Despair, there is hope. From the creators of The Universe and Your Body, comes the cure for CD. It’s called Time.

Time is a fast acting (depending on your perspective), proven pain reliever. In fact, 100% of CD sufferers experienced elimination of all symptoms with Time. Time is available to everyone, usually found in one minute doses. With just sixty minutes of Time, you can conquer your Concert Despair.

Common side effects of Time include aging, changes in perspective, and weight gain. Do not take Time if the building is on fire or if you really REALLY need to pee.