Come Out with Your Hands Up
George the Plumber came by one day to replace our ailing water heater. I had to swing by home to let him in the house (I was at work). I pulled up on our street and there was a police car, halfway on the street and halfway in our driveway. I parked across the street and went running up to our driveway. Apparently, this police car had been cruising our neighborhood, and when the cop saw this plain, white van backed up to our garage door, he thought it was a burglar, and he greeted George the Plumber with his gun drawn!

It's nice to see our Torrance police keeping an eye on things.

The Year in Review
I wrote a little newsletter, printed about 80 copies, and never sent it out. So no one got to read this, except you, my three faithful readers:

Greetings from So Cal!

I think the house is still where I left it this morning, and my car hasn't floated out of the parking lot yet, so I'll assume life is still good.

Guido is building rockets and bombs at PatriotMissles.com (oops, was that a secret?) and Wild Flower is still conjuring up lies and half-truths for Pen Maker. Really, in this industry, Pen Maker's claims are the most straightforward and honest because management is so paranoid about lawsuits. So buy Pen Maker instead of Sanford (Sharpie - blech!) or Pilot (Dr. Grip - boo!) and maybe I'll get raise this year!

Scooter is a fifth grader and enjoying an extended soccer season on two teams this year. He also plays basketball. And he's pretty smart, too. He's one of those guys who doesn't put in a lot of effort and makes good but not stellar grades. He'd be awesome if he had some follow-through, but considering the gene pool, we're not expecting much.

Fluffy is in the second grade and discovering that reading is a good thing, now that we've finally wised up and stopped force-feeding her all the books that Scooter read and let her choose her own girlie books instead (e.g., Lizzie McGuire - gag!).

Fluffy & Wild Flower are still doing fun stuff together in Rainbow Maidens (Indian Guides), like tie-dying T-shirts, ice skating, Christmas caroling, and camping. Whoda thought we'd actually enjoy sleeping on the ground under a thin sheet of nylon?

During spring break, Wild Flower, Scooter & Fluffy took a road trip to Gold Country. The kids were tortured with visits to museums and old mining towns, then rewarded with a tour of the Jelly Belly factory and all the spaghetti-flavored jelly beans they wanted.

Fluffy had started referring to her Hawaii grandma as "that lady in Hawaii," so we made a long-overdue trip home this summer. Scooter caught a fish and both kids learned how to make fire at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We got lost in a gigantic pineapple-shaped maze. We ate Zippy's chili and zip-paks.

After spending almost a year in a nursing home, Guido's dad finally went to that big mah jong table in the sky. It turned our holiday season a little sideways, but the Bunny Clan recovered enough to meet in Las Vegas for a post-Christmas, pre-New Year diversion. We made a detour to Hoover Dam on the drive home, just to make sure it's holding up in anticipation of the big rains.

Hope you're all happy, healthy, and enjoying life to the fullest. And if you see flames leaping out of your microwave oven, your kid might be conducting a science experiment!

Need Bigger Allowance
I was paying for my stuff at Target and Scooter ran off. I found him typing on a computer keyboard. I asked him what he said doing, and he said with a laugh, "Applying for a job." He's ten. I wish he could stay little and cute forever!

Talent Stalkers
Just today at lunch, Vickey and I were talking about how we have been approached by talent scouts quite a few times now (for our kids, not ourselves, of course) - at the mall, at Target, at McDonald's. Well, tonight someone called our house and asked specifically about Scooter. How in the world did someone get Scooter's name and our home phone number? I'm kind of annoyed that someone would actually track him down like that. Did someone get a copy of our school yearbook or the soccer directory? I don't think I like this.

And what's the deal with all the talent scouts in Torrance these days? I have to admit, when I was looking for a job, I answered an ad to be a talent scout, as I felt I had a lot of access to kids since I had one in public school and one in preschool, and we spent all our weekends at youth sporting events or Chuck E. Cheese birthday parties. So I can understand why we run into scouts at the same kinds of places I would have scouted. But I am still incredulous at the appeal of Torrance. (Did I mention that the Spy Kid and his brother live in our general neighborhood and went to the same school as my kids? We've run into them at the mall, 7-eleven, Target. They're in middle school now.)

Turkey Tournament
Scooter played in his first select soccer tournament and it was fantastic! We missed the first day, as we were driving back from San Francisco. The team lost that day. But we won both games on Saturday and advanced to the semifinals on Sunday. We lost that game, but all the guys got medals for placing fourth overall. Not bad. The coach said that's the furthest a select team of his has ever gone.

I convinced Penmaker to help sponsor our team, and they paid for duffel bags for the entire team! I had to write a proposal to justify the expense. In theory, this bit of advertising has the potential to reach thousands of people over the next six months. Not bad for a few hundred dollars. And it promotes goodwill for the company.

Our coach is funny. At each game, he had all the boys line up their duffel bags along the sideline with the Penmaker logo facing the other team (the logo is on both ends).

The boys also got really nice logoed jackets (parents paid for). They look like a real team, and a fairly affluent one at that, with the matching jackets and sports bags.

Scooter Select
Little Scooter Bunny made the soccer select team! This has been his dream since he first heard of Select in his first year in U10 back in 3rd grade. A few of his friends had gotten their phone calls, and we figured Scooter didn't make it again. A couple of days later we got the call. I kind of wonder if he was the second round draft, but oh well, he's still on the team, and he's going to work his butt off until the end of the school year! This is a big deal for our family, because soccer is both kids' favorite sport, and Scooter has wanted to join a club team for years, but (1) we can't afford it and (2) we can't afford it. Oh, that and the fact that Scooter doesn't have that killer instinct the other club players have. It's also a big deal, because now, instead of soccer season ending this weekend, we play until the end of the school year! Wahoo!!! This soccer mom is ecstatic!

I downloaded the Kicker this morning and found out that Scooter's regular team, the Blue Bandits, got a good sportsmanship award. We really do have a good team. The boys are very nice (the Select boys are not as soft and sweet, which is probably one reason why they made Select, but that's another story), and they play well as a team. Our coach is knowledgeable, positive and encouraging. I just wish he and the parents were a little tighter. We had a great year when the Rapids took first place. We could have had a fun year like that again, even though our guys are only in 3rd right now. (There's still the possibility of going to the regional playoffs if our guys can fend off the Flamehawks this weekend.)

I also got a few of my pictures on the website (www.region14-ayso.com) and in the newsletter (The Kicker)!

Soccer mania continues!

Bears for Charity
The Rainbows (all 23 of `em plus a few siblings and one spouse) met at the Downtown Disney Build-a-Bear store. Each girl made a bear, added her own touch by dressing it up (mom paid), and included a note to the anonymous child who will receive the bear this Christmas. Isn't that nice?

Fluffy and I were the event hosts (hostesses? too many s's). Since the girls would be going home with basically nothing but a good feeling in their hearts (Vickey and I took the bears with us to wrap with festive bows), I bought patches for each girl to put on her vest. Then Fluffy and I gave out little scrapbook kits so each girl can make a memory book and picture frame to her liking. I spent a fortune on those pens, paper, stickers, and patches.

Vickey, Janet & I got a lot of stares and a few comments as we carried thirteen bear boxes back to the car. It looked like we had some really spoiled little girls.

We met the rest of the crew back at Tortilla Joe's (an offshoot of Joachim Splichal's Patina empire, I think). The food was pretty good. I hate that they automatically added an 18% gratuity to our bill. They could have treated us like shit, and still get an above-average tip.

The girls had a great time playing in the mall. Fluffy adores Thea, but doesn't get to see her very often, so she was beyond excited. Overall, it was a very nice outing.

Mean Girls
Fluffy's been having trouble with some really mean girls at school. I always worried about Scooter getting beat up (based on my co-workers telling me that every boy has to get into at least one fistfight in his life to prove he's not a wuss), but those girls are the ones we need to worry about. One actually said to Fluffy, "I'm going to sock you," and then hit her a bunch of times. And the verbal abuse is worse. So after our endless coaching to Fluffy to steer very clear of these girls and to not get cornered in the bathroom, Scooter said, "When I grow up, I want only sons. Girls are too much trouble." You said it, boy!

Is that a Drinking Game?
A bunch of fifth graders got in trouble during recess for playing spin the bottle. Heh heh heh!

Thankful for (slurp) Bibs
When Scooter was little, he drooled a LOT. I was afraid he would have to wear a bib to kindergarten. His preschool class did these little turkeys for Thanksgiving where each tail feather has something that they're thankful for. Funny preschool teachers put Mom, Dad, Gerber Graduates and Bibs on Scooter's turkey feathers. Ha ha.

Cheesewillikers
We're always being approached by talent scouts about Scooter. Fluffy finally got her turn when we were at McDonalds after their soccer games. She was looking especially cute, in her pink soccer shirt and ponytails tied with pink ribbons. Unlike Scooter, she really wants to go to the screen test, but she has a basketball game at the same time. I would love it if she were in a commercial or two; however, since it will probably interfere with her school and my work, it probably won't work out anyway.

The Hostess with the Leastest
Fluffy always cracks me up. She was pretending to be Lizzie McGuire and I was her friend. She was throwing a pretend party, but somehow I ended up bringing the chips and soda, calling all the pretend friends, providing the music since she only owns one CD, and I even had to give her a gift. In the meantime, we had put the real tent back out to dry out more, and we were lying on the ground looking at clouds, but I guess they weren't moving fast enough for the little fluffball. She got all mad and said, "I'm not enjoying this party. And YOU'RE the host!"

Mommie Dearest Day Care
Everyone's telling me we need to rent "Daddy Day Care." In the meantime, I started telling Scooter & Fluffy some of my own day care stories.

One of the first ladies we visited watched a handful of little boys, and had a nice set-up in a back room that looked out onto the big, grassy backyard with friendly trees along the perimeter. She was a very pleasant, caring, Christian woman, but she was also really, really fat, and when she escorted us to the door, probably twenty feet away, she choked and wheezed and struggled, and had to sit down halfway there.

There's the woman who came highly recommended by a co-worker. When I called her, she grunted in reply, "I don't do dat no more," and hung up. I couldn't pronounce her name anyway.

There's one who lives really close to our school who was recommended by the child care referral service. She had about fourteen kids running in and out of the house, no one was doing homework, kids were fighting and screaming, and cigarette smoke poured into the house from some guy smoking on the back porch right outside the screen door. I think she still watches kids these days, but not mine!

Guido wanted to go with a Chinese lady in Redondo Beach who didn't speak any English. I think he was impressed because she washed each kid's bottom in a tub of water when she changed their diaper.

The Montessori school was absolutely spotless. It was the middle of the day, when the school should have been noisy and cluttered. They literally had no playground and no toys. Later on someone told me that the whole Montessori philosophy began as a way to take care of large numbers of poor orphans in war-torn Europe, hence the minimalist (sparse, bare, sad, depressing) surroundings.

The most memorable one was Paula from Hermosa Beach. Her house was a dump. Dirty dishes were piled up higher than my head all over the kitchen; exposed outlets and light switches were within children's reach. She took us outside to where the kids played, a slab of concrete with pieces of wood piled up unsteadily and covered by piece of cheap artificial turf. Then, maybe to impress me, she said she had had a couple of beers for lunch!

For Scooter, I finally settled on Crystal. She had a huge dragonfly tattooed on her boob. I later found out her son is ADD and so is she! We moved on to a day care center.

Fluffy went to "Grandma Ruth." Grandma Ruth watched fourteen kids (just like the Towers woman). She also kept an eye on her husband Clark, who had had a mild stroke, and her grown son who was disabled and brain-damaged due to a brain tumor he had when he was a teenager. Ruth and Clark had spent all their life savings on court costs trying to gain custody of their grandson (offspring of the brain-damaged son and his drug-addicted ex-girlfriend), and therefore she watched all these kids, even though she was about seventy! Poor Fluffy was left to play by herself in her playpen for hours at a time ("she's such a good baby, you can just leave her and she plays by herself"). One day I went to pick her up and found her under the couch. Fluffy moved to a day care center as soon as they had an opening.

I (hate) Huckabees
So there's this new movie out, I (heart) Huckabees. Did I mention this before, how they asked us for free pens to use in the movie? And then they asked us for more free pens, because supposedly one of their lead actors is a klepto and kept taking the pens home. (Don't they have a budget for props?) And in return they promised to let the Marketing department visit the set since they were filming right around the corner at the vacant Epson building. And they also sort of hinted that they might let us come to the L.A. premiere. Of course, we were quite excited at the prospect of meeting Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin.

Well, on the day we were supposed to visit the set, one of the actors (who shall not remain nameless, Jude Law) threw a hissy fit and refused to let us commoners come and disrupt his creative (Jude Law is an asshole) process. So they said they would maybe let us come back on another day when the prima donna (Jude Law is a little princess) wasn't there. They never did. And when our PR guy called his Huckabee contact to see if we could get into the movie, all phone lines were disconnected.

I (hate) Jude Law.

Woods Valley 2004
We had our last Rainbow Woods Valley camp this weekend. Even though I took a day of vacation, I got a late start and didn't get to the campgrounds until it was dark. They put our tribe way out in the farthest corner of the park. Really nice, putting moms and daughters way out there with the bears and coyotes, and worse, far away from the bathrooms. I was ready to leave the park and find a motel when the Hardgroves found us. We had dinner with them at Papa Bear's, and then we shared their tent since it was too dark to put up mine. The next day we set up my tent before everyone else arrived.

It was a pretty laid-back day. We set out food and snacked all day long. We held the nation craft activity (foam hats) in the morning, and in the afternoon we went to the Thunderbird area to make ice cream! Fluffy said it didn't taste that great. But it was still fun making it. In the late afternoon, we played bingo.

Our campfire turned out to be really nice. They didn't allow fires this year, so everyone lined up their Coleman lanterns and made a nice little stage. Our skit was a series of knock-knock jokes.

I have to say thank you again to the Hardgroves for prompting me to put everything away before we went to bed. I always like to live out of my car anyway, because I don't like my things getting dirty, and I don't like a lot of junk in my tent. But I'm also lazy about putting things away, and I like to leave out things I know we're going to use again. However, that night we put away just about everything. The only things I left out were one chair (to sit on to put on my shoes), my cooler, and the Coleman lantern (it was too hot to put away). The only things in the tent were the air mattress, two sleeping bags and one tote bag (and the inflatable potty).

Somewhere in the middle of the night, it started to rain, and it never stopped. I am so glad we had the potty, because there was no way I was taking Fluffy out in the rain to use the bathroom.

It rained and rained and rained. I didn't sleep at all, because I was so worried about the tent leaking. That's a pretty good tent! Even though my stakes came loose in the mud, and the tent kind of caved it around us when the wind blew, it never leaked.

I kept looking out my window to see if anyone was up. I heard roosters crowing. Finally, I heard someone from our tribe starting to load up their car, and that was my cue to get up. I carried Fluffy to the car, packed up the air mattress and sleeping bags, and asked the Hardgroves if they had any room for my other stuff. I rolled up the tarp and tent onto one huge bundle and they threw it in their truck with my cooler and soggy chair. That mud was so gross. Thank goodness I had extra towels and throwaway tablecloths to line the car.

I slid the car down the mud road, and went to eat breakfast with the Hardgroves. Instead of going to the pumpkin patch like we had planned, we went shopping at the Carlsbad outlets.

When we got home, we hosed down everything on the sidewalk. What a camping trip!

Good Mourning
It took a month, but the valet parking is finally up and running at our school. Is it just me, or is it always that disorganized at the beginning of the school year? I don't remember it being so chaotic in prior years.

Anyway, directing the valet parking is a perk reserved just for fifth graders. And there were Scooter's friends, lined up on the sidewalk, waiting to open doors to let kids out. Teddy was looking especially serious about the whole thing. I can't believe those are the same little kids who started kindergarden with Scooter just a few years ago. When Scooter was getting out of the car, I threw my arms around him and wailed, "Oh, my little baby, you're growing up too fast!" (that's to make up for him laughing at me last night when I burned my fingers on a towel I heated up in the microwave for him)

Wahhh!! What am I going to do when he and Fluffy leave our house for good? I'm going to be so sad and lonely. I'll have to take in little street urchins and torture them with my hugs and kisses.

Death Pals
I commented one day that a friend said that we are soul mates. Scooter asked, "Are you sure you're soul mates? Or death pals?" What the heck does that mean?

Too Much Information
I am so glad I live only five minutes away from work. Today I had to go home and change my pants. Whew, to think I almost wore the beige ones today. Anyway, I told my officemate, a 37-year old GUY, that I had to go home for a little while, and he said, "What's the matter? Weren't you wearing a mommy diaper?" I guess he HAS been listening when I ramble on about this and that after all. Oops!

Belly Flop
In my never-ending quest to embarrass myself and whatever family members happen to be around... Scooter and I were kicking a soccer ball back and forth as we headed to the soccer field for Fluffy's game. I now know that I should not wear floppy rubber slippers and run after a soccer ball on a grassy field with a big beach bag slung across my back. I tripped, my bag went flying over my head, and my entire body hit the ground all at once. I had grass stains, not only on the knees of my jeans, but on my pockets and all over the front. Fell down right in front of a referee and all the parents. Someone should have videotaped it. I'm sure it could have been worth some money.

Mean Girls
When I picked up Fluffy at school today, she introduced me to her new friend Ashley, who "says the A-word and calls people 'Twerp.'" Nice.

Then we saw a former friend, Nikole, whom Fluffy absolutely adored last year, but this year, "She calls people 'asshole' and 'stupid' and 'twerp.' And she didn't think I was listening and she told Ally, 'Fluffy doesn't have any style!' What is she talking about! SHE doesn't have any style either!"

I could have said something like, "Well, sometimes people put other people down if they're jealous of them or feel insecure," or even worse, "You should probably feel sorry for her if she has to make herself feel better by saying things like that." Instead I said, "Well, what do you expect? Her mother was either drunk or stoned when she brought her to your birthday party."