My Truant Pen

Basketball

I’m sitting on the wooden floor of a gym right now, listening to the distinctive percussion and squeaks of a basketball practice. The practicees in question are between 6 – 8 years of age. For many of them, it’s their first time with a basketball. Others can, with calm collection, make actual baskets on full height hoops. This is the tenth and final session – I’ve signed Msr. Grey up for another basketball session at the Y next session. But already I think he’s better than I was in Jr. High. He can dribble (kind of), pass (kind of) and shoot (kind of). He doesn’t know the rules of the game, but that will come.

Depending on why, how and when you know me, it may come as a vast surprise to you that I played basketball. In fact, not only did I play basketball, I played at the State level. (A Very Big Deal, in case you’re from a more urban or non-American childhood.) I started Jr. High as a three sport “athlete”. I played volleyball, basketball and track – in addition to my rather extensive musical activities. With volleyball, I only lasted through jr high, although I was a line judge through high school – respected enough they brought me along when they went to state. With track, I ran the mile, the 100 meter high hurdles, the long jump, the triple jump and the relay. I was terrible at the running, and middle of the pack at the jumping. I lasted to sophomore year of high school. I was part of a state relay team, and was part of the handoff that dropped the baton. I took full responsibility.

But I lasted longest in basketball, and liked it best.

Lest my litany of athletic accomplishment make you think you have misjudged me, I promise you haven’t. I was a TERRIBLE athlete. None of it came naturally. I had no prior exposure to sports. I didn’t know even the most basic rules of sports games. Things that were part of the culture and nature of my peers had passed me by. I recall in a certain little league game, I skipped third base on a good hit because it seemed more efficient to run straight home. And although I was healthy and somewhat active, I was not at all athletic. I still am not at all athletic.

But I think athletics taught me some of the most important lessons I learned in high school. First, it taught me how to be terrible at something I tried hard to do. I mostly did things that came easily to me. Academics were never my problem. Like most people I focused on things I was good at and convinced myself that things I was bad at were less important and less valuable. I think it’s very easy to put your head down, focus on your areas of competence and ignore your areas of weakness. It helped that a certain segment of society agreed that academics were more important than sports.

But because my school was so very small (There were fewer than 120 kids in the high school. My graduating class was HUGE with 42. Two years prior, we’d graduated 28.), and so very athletic, there was somehow enough peer pressure or something to convince me to attempt to challenge my weakness, and study an area in which I was not interested. But with basketball, I was terrible. I had no natural advantages and several significant disadvantages. I couldn’t shoot, had ball handling skills worse than several of these kids I’m watching now, got tired running and generally struggled.

But I practiced, and practiced. I played with the boys at lunch (to their vast chagrin). I ran the lines hard. I tried to force my uncompliant body shoot from the knees, follow-through, know the ball. I got playing time because the school was so small that everyone got playing time. I progressed from the worse player on the team to only the second worst player on the team. Despite my massive incompetence, there was a lot of pressure to sign up for the the team because – truly – we were on the edge of not having enough players to HAVE a JV team. My coaches went from annoyed to bemused to fondly affectionate as the years clocked by. Over six long years, I became a part of the team.

In my final basketball memory, we were in Spokane at State (where the Morton/White Pass girl’s and boy’s basketball teams are right now, as a matter of fact). It was our third game. After having won the first two, we were against a local team and I don’t mind admitting that the refs were horribly biased. It would have been a tight game anyway – they were good – but after our top scorers* fouled out we had no chance. You are allowed to bring 12 girls to the game. Our team only had 11. So I was there – at the bottom of the bench – living and dying with every pass up and down the court. My grandfather and dad were there – my grandfather actually put my paralyzed grandmother into respite care for a weekend so he could be there, for me, at the state tournament. And Mr. Henderson and Mr. Coleman – losing one of the biggest games they’d coached – grinned and looked at me and told me to get on the court. There were 1:47 seconds left, and in that time they ran all the plays around getting me a shot.

I missed one and committed a foul and am IN THE BOOKS at the state tournament. I had earned (and been given) a place where I was not gifted, capable, advanced or impressive. I had conquered my weakness, ignorance and inability with great effort in order to accomplish medoicrity. I would never be GOOD. But I was there, and it was good for me indeed.

It may be that I am taking that experience of being terrible away from my son with these early lessons. He’ll never feel quite as out of water as I did, and in his image of himself, he is athletic. But I can’t say enough about the importance of trying really hard to do things you’re terrible at – so that you can understand what can be accomplished by hard work, and what you were given as a gift. I had spent years feeling smug in classrooms as the kids next to me struggled with things that came easily to me. I needed the gift of humility that came with then going to practice and struggling with things that came easily to them.

*One of the very best – well top three – of the basketball players on that team was Brandy Clark. I remember her primarily as an astonishingly good 3 point shooter. She could get 7 of 10 from the three point line, even under pressure. She was an awesome weapon – with a thick ponytail and a big smile. I didn’t even know that she PLAYED guitar. To me, she was primarily a great athlete and nice person. Her song Better Dig Two just won a Country Music Award and is topping the Country Music Charts.

Another of the great players on that team – Sarah – was an astonishingly gifted all around player. She was fast, tall, had amazing hands, and could really shoot. I’ve since seen pictures of her on Facebook with another Morton Grad… at the White House Christmas party standing next to Michelle Obama. I remember Sarah thanking me, my senior year, for helping her see “brainiacs” in a more sympathetic light. She told me she respected me. It meant a lot.

I sometimes ponder how incredible and lucky it is that I have spent so much of my life surrounded by such incredible people, even if we didn’t know it that winter in Spokane when we were 15.

Yes, kind sir, she sits and spins

I find myself at an odd confluence of events today. I hope that you know me well enough by now to know that although I pay attention to my body and appearance, I’m far from obsessesed with the Western standard of beauty for women. It helps to have realized it is unobtainable for me.

However, I am starting to think that the pregnancy weight I put on with Thane will not actually come off by itself. Call it a hunch. I would like my maintenance weight to be the weight I was before I started procreating lo eight years ago. This is a matter of 25 pounds. I believe this is achievable, having worked my way back to it before between the boys. So when my husband asked if I would join him in this diet he’s done a ton of research on, and which he has found efficacious before, I figured this was a good time to attempt the challenge again.

The diet is a called the Slow Carb Diet and is more or less a geek’s attempt to optimize weight loss. In some studies, it’s been shown to be more effective than other forms of diet. My husband did a ton of research on it. The basic concepts are this:

1) Eat all low glycemic index foods: lean meats, vegetables and legumes
2) Eat no high glycmeic foods: any form of carb, fruit, diary, sugar, sweetener. Any food that “comes in white” is right out. (With exceptions).
3) Take one cheat day in seven and eat all the carbs you want (to prevent other cheating, and to prevent your body from going into starvation mode)

In practice this means that breakfast is eggs and beans (breakfast is the hard part). Thank HEAVENS I drink my coffee black! Lunch is dinner leftovers. Dinner is a compliant meal like split pea soup, cassoulet, black bean casserole, morrocan chicken, lentil soup…

Snacks have been the hard part. I’ve probably had more nuts than I should. Hard boiled eggs are great for this. Veggies with hummus become the culinary highlight of your day. My husband says the hardest part is that you get absolutely not taste of anything sweet with this diet. It’s true. Even artificial sweeteners are out. He says the flip side is that you “reset” your perception of sweet, so that a glass of milk or an apple seems deliciously sweet.

I’m on day three, and so far I’ve been compliant. We’ll see how it goes. I figure that an attempt is better than no attempt, and that the possibility of success is motivating. My weight is pretty stable, so once I’ve lost the weight, i believe I will be able to keep it off using more normal dietary constraints.

If you’re curious, here is some other information on the diet:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2012/07/12/how-to-lose-100-pounds/
http://gizmodo.com/5709913/4+hour-body-+-the-slow+carb-diet
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/09/10/160757730/low-and-slow-may-be-the-way-to-go-when-it-comes-to-dieting

A few weeks ago, I had finally decided that my knee was far enough from right — nearly 18 months after massive knee surgery — I was not content with the condition of my knee. I can’t cross it. I can’t kneel. It hurts with the weather. And most importantly, the differences in strength between repaired left knee and normal right knee are more than obvious enough to be seen in my legs. They’re still working differently, and my body is pulled off center. Like weight loss, I’ve concluded this won’t fix itself. So I went to my orthopedic surgeon – expecting a PT prescription.

Instead, he gave me a prescription for spinning class. Greaaaat. Now, I believe that when you ask for medical help and advice you should consider it, and assuming it passes the sniff test, you should implement it. I suppose I shouldn’t have needed an orthopedic surgeon to tell me that I needed exercise for my knee, but apparently I did. Having gotten that advice, I treat it as sacred as a PT prescription, and decided that logistic impossibilities aside, I needed to comply.

In truth, I am really feeling the need for exercise. I don’t feel strong, or flexible, or powerful. I feel weak and fragile. My two mile a day walking simply isn’t enough, or the right kind of exercise. Of course, the flip side is that I truly do not know where I can find two hours a week to go to the gym. I will simply have to be opportunistic about it. But that is no excuse for not trying.

So I have signed up for a froo froo gym with a gazillion classes* and exercise equipments and the kind of strutting gym rats that have provided disincentives for unathletic, pudgy geeks like me since the gym was invented. Fortunately, I’m no longer 22 and do not care for their disregard.

So here I am, in February, with mounds of snow on the ground, on a wacko diet that means I can’t have Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast and the kind of gym membership that everyone has and no one uses.

I’ll let you know how it works out!

*Critically, it has about 16 spinning classes a week and child care and is less than 5 miles from my house.

State of the (Marital) Union

I’ve been very happily married – to the same man, no less! – for twelve and a half years now. If you count the time we dated before marriage, I’m perilously close to having been with my beloved husband for as much time as I was alive prior to meeting him. In that dozen plus years, we have developed something of a tradition that I have found extremely useful and – as it is topical – I thought I would share our “State of the Union” dinner with you.

Adam and I communicate well with each other. We both understand the other’s preferred form of communication and know how to adapt our language to reach each other. In addition to talking well when we’re together, we’ve developed a family toolset for managing the logistics of a two kid, two job family: the sacred Google calendar, the text messages and the emailed reminders. Basically – we have no problems with tactical communication. But just as in a company or a career, it’s not enough to be tactical in your relationship. You need to be strategic too. Otherwise, you drift and find five years later that both of you were doing something because you thought it was important to the other person… and neither of you actually wanted to be doing it at all. Drifting is no better in marriages than it is in other endeavors.

So every year, after Christmas is accomplished, we go out to a very fancy dinner at our favorite restaurant. We dress up. We hire a babysitter. And we have our State of the Union dinner. This started around the time our youngest was born, when the opportunities for casual deep conversation became more limited, and we found ourselves practically bullet-pointing conversations to get all the critical information out. We were in crunch, and it was very difficult to step back. There’s nothing like Melissa’s lamb shanks to help you take a long look at life.

Whether you have a fancy dinner together, take a long weekend, or just catch up over breakfast – the things we talk about are worth conversing with your partner with on a regular basis. You might find that even more often than annually is fruitful.

Finances:
I’m the keeper of the book in our family. I’ve made sure to document things so that if I was unable to advise Adam, he’d know where everything is. But as a family gets more busy and division of labor gets more critical, we can’t duplicate the job of bookkeeping. But it is critical for the health of a family to know how things stand in the moolah department. Some years I’ve actually generated a full report of where we stood: assets, liability, concerns, run rates etc. Other years, I just give him a high level overview. Some questions to discuss on finances are:
– Are we cashflow positive or negative (eg. are we getting into debt, getting out of debt or building on our savings)?
– If we are cashflow negative, why, and what can we do to stop it?
– If we are cashflow positive, how are we allocating our funds? Are they going to the things that are our top priorities?
– Do we anticipate any major changes in the money situation? Eg. do we think we might have a change in job, huge expenditure, inheritance or other looming event that is going to change the way things are?

That leads to the next conversation….

Jobs:
Does your boss know more about your career objectives than your spouse? Are you angling for a particular promotion? Are you becoming increasingly unhappy and daydreaming about a career change? Is your company facing shaky finances, or opening a new headquarters? We often talk to our spouses about day to day events, but it’s even more important to understand the larger context of your employment together. Adam and I talk about our relative happiness with our jobs and careers (two differently things, by the way), what we might need to do to fulfill our next-step ambitions, whether we need training, education or a new opportunity, etc. This has the advantage of causing us to pause for reflection about what it is we want – together – in our careers. It also means that shifts in employment are not the first you hear about a possible issue.

Kids:
We talk about our kids a lot. All the time, in fact. But this is a good chance to compare notes on how we think the boys are doing, whether they’re getting the things they need or if we need to adjust our parenting strategies. This year, I raised ideas like sending Grey to an overnight summer camp, to see what Adam thought. We probably need a check in less for kids than other topics, but it would be hard to imagine a serious discussion about our lives not including them.

This is also a great time to talk about whether your family has the desired number of children. You might discover that since your last heartfelt discussion, your partner has been taken with baby fever. Or it might be the impetus to schedule that surgery that indicates your family is complete as-is. Or, perhaps, you collectively decide not to make any decisions yet.

House:
By the time you’re cleaning your plate, it’s a good time to figure out whether you’re still living in the right place. Is your house still the right size, with the right number of rooms? Is your commute killing you? And assuming you’re not inclined to move, then what sort of home improvements – if any – would you want to prioritize for the coming year? How will you pay for them? What’s bothering you about your living situation?

Finally, you get to the dessert topic of the dinner…

Vacation:
It was at one of these dinners that we conceived the plan to go to Istanbul for our 10th anniversary. It was – obviously – the sort of thing that required months advanced planning. But it was a memory for a life time. Many of these kind of memories require advanced planning. If you sit around and wait for vacations to happen, well, you end the year with two weeks paid leave and a bad case of burnout. This is the time to figure out what you (collectively) want, and what it would take to make that thing happen. Bonus: I can usually send my boss my entire year’s vacation schedule in February.

Schedule review:
As we linger over the last cup of coffee, staring dreamily into each other’s eyes, we went through every single recurring event on our shared weekly calendar to make sure it still deserved its place. Is the weekly gaming just a habit, or is it a meaningful event in our life? Does Aikido still fill the need it was meant to fill? Does our worship life at church reflect our call to serve God? Are guitar lessons still gusting me? We didn’t end up changing any of our recurring events, but it was really liberating to consider our days as completely free – to be filled with the things we most value. This exercise affirmed our choices, and made them choice instead of tradition.

You might think this sounds incredibly unromatic. In fact, it might sound a bit like a running a family as a business. I mean, a meeting agenda for a romantic dinner? Really? Has it come to that?

In the history of marriage, the institution has never been JUST about love. Love plays a tremendous role as initiator, motivator and facilitator within marriage. But marriage has also been the way we organize the work of our days (especially for women), decide where to live, how to spend our time, organize our money, and raise our children. I think it’s much easier to enjoy your shared love when you also have a clear vision of what your spouse hopes for, what’s bothering them, and what they’re thinking about. When the participants in marriage have clear, shared goals for their lives, it cuts down tremendously on uncertainty and conflict and increases joy.

So that’s part of how my family deals with the complexities of being a family in the 21st century. (I must admit, I’m tempted by the Agile/Scrum family meeting concept in the article above!) How does your family make big decisions, and talk about big issues?

Nemo Finale

This morning we woke up (late) to a bright, sunshiny, monochromatic world. And a house with no heat. But the bright sunshiny world and temperatures in the upper 30s made today a much better day to have the furnace on the fritz than any other day of the storm. We’re actually not sure what the issue is – the furnace spontaneously began working again about 15 minutes prior to the arrival of the furnace guy. But all this was minimally inconvenient – the sunlight streaming in kept some rooms warmer than the furnace does!

Adam stands on the drifts on the house-side of the driveway

So where did Nemo leave us? According to the National Weather Service, our friend dropped 22 inches of dry powerdy snow on Stoneham. 65 mile an hour winds sculpted those inches in to massive drifts and clear-swept sections – an inequal distribution that was exacerbated by the labors of homeowners with shovels, the suddenly popular owners of snow-blowers and the profiteering-but-slightly-lazy shovel wielding teens.

I thought, as I luxuriated in bed this morning (the covers being even more enticing when there is no heat in the room) that today would be a nice, quiet, peaceful day. We were snowed in enough to intimidate us from making the 20 mile trip to church. But then the furnace happened. Once that was resolved, I had to go grocery shopping. That was epic. The produce section of the store looked as though locusts had descended upon it. I’m guessing that bit didn’t get restocked. Either that, or everyone else in Stoneham also found a pressing need for bananas. This was even more epic because, starting on Ash Wednesday after service, I’m going to join my husband in attempting a Slow Carb Diet. I’m rather unconvinced of my ability to stick to this. Cutting out carbs and dairy is like, um, cutting out bread and milk from my diet. So while at Stop & Shop, I attempted to find slow-carb-compliant foods so I can at least make it a single week. We shall see.

And then more shoveling. Hours of effort yesterday + a borrowed snow blower + a pair of neighborhood teens got the first car unburied and the second car half unburied. Another 2+ hours of snowblower + shoveling and we can use our entire driveway again. These are things you don’t think about in October when you buy a house: where are you going to put the snow for your driveway? When it’s nearly two natural feet plus massive drifts, this becomes non-trivial. Two years ago, I had to walk each shovel full across the street. Fortunately, the next 7 days have highs above freezing, so we should lose a lot of the snowmass. As it is, it’s very difficult to turn corners driving due to lost visibility with the drifts.

If I had to rate this blizzard, I would give it an A for the following reasons:
1) Life time memory: the “boys” spending hours sledding down our street, followed by pancakes at midnight. These are the times you remember in your nursing home.
2) Actual vs. predicted snow: absolutely on target. This snow storm came precisely as billed
3) Loss of life: while there were a few tragic losses, there were fewer than usually accompany weather like this. Partially this is due to the precautions (draconic as they were) taken by our elected officials to shut everything down for an extended period of time.
4) Fellowship: I spent so much wonderful time this weekend with my neighbors and friends – all a stone’s throw from the house – that it was a joy. We played, ate, shoveled, laughed, watched movies, and enjoyed our time together. This is one of life’s great blessings.
5) Inconvenience: we kept power and only lost heat after it was no longer critically needed. It was a liberating inconvenience for us.

So Nemo: would recommend and do it again!

I give persective to the wall-side drifts. A "Before" picture would have shown the tips of the wipers as the only visible parts of the cars. (Due to drifting) — I give persective to the wall-side drifts. A “Before” picture would have shown the tips of the wipers as the only visible parts of the cars. (Due to drifting)

Nemo Day 2: Nemo’s revenge

Having chronicled my escapades in snow yesterday for you, it seems unfair to keep my breath-bated audience from finding out – as Paul Harvey would say – the rest of the story! As we return to the snowy streets of Stoneham, our heroic crew woke up a little too early after last night’s sledding-and-pancakes extravaganza (well, the masculine parts. The feminine parts lollygagged in bed for another few hours.)

The site that met the eyes upon awakening was a vast expanse of snow – still falling hard at mid-morning. It’s difficult to gauge the amount on the ground since the blizzard gales have sculpted and rearranged it, but I’d guess we have at least 18 inches – possibly more – of blizzard-spawn. The brave pancake eaters and street lugers from the dark have now been converted to studious snow-blowers and shovelers. The children – talking big talk about how much they want to build snow men just like Calvin – remain in their pjs.

The next planned activity is The Princess Bride!

Breaking Nemo News: from the front lines of Stoneham MA

This fall, your brave correspondent risked life, limb and coffee to bring you hourly, real-time updates about the ravages of Hurricane Sandy in Massachusetts (as seen through my windows). Trash cans fell over. Branches swayed. It was epic.

Now that we’re ACTUALLY going to be in the middle of a storm that might even AFFECT us, I thought there was nothing for me to do but put on my galoshes (or fuzzy slippers – whichever is more convenient) and continue that fine reporting tradition. Come back all day to find out what’s happening in Stoneham during this Epic Winter Event! You can also follow this on my twitter feed, Facebook page and G+ pages… until such a time as I get too lazy to update in four locations.

#Nemo 10 am: Actual snowflakes have been spotted in Stoneham, MA. I would get a head start on shoveling, but it’s not sticking yet.

#Nemo 11 am: Trying to figure out if we should expect two feet of snow or three. Turns out the scale maxes out at 24″ – which is shown as white. SOMEONE is getting clever!

#Nemo 12 noon: The snow is starting to thicken. Unsalted surfaces have started to look whitish. School was announced closed on Wednesday – starting to think they could have made it until the 2:20 closing time. Daycare closes in half an hour: prepare for influx of children!

#Nemo 1320: Roads closed. Children home. Mass transit shut down. Snow accumulation at nearly an inch. Proactively eating chocolate to prepare for possible future starvation.

#Nemo 1400: Snow day pirate map comics while we wait for enough snow to play in.

#Nemo 1420: BREAKING NEWS! My husband just brought me warm-from-the-oven cookies! And you were wondering why people always stock up on milk before snowstorms.

#Nemo 1500: Three hour long conference call complete. Snow now covering most surfaces outside and falling at a moderate rate. Pirate-comic completed and AWESOME.

#Nemo 1600: As the blizzard begins to bliz with increasing seriousness, I am preparing the emergency survival plan for my family. As night falls in New England, I have laid careful plans for gumbo and The Princess Bride. I may be so consumed by these dire tasks that I am unable to make updates for an hour or two, so do not send the Sherpas out for me until at least 2000.

#Nemo 1820: actual blizzard has arrived. There is probably six inches of snow, hard winds, and more falling. The only moving vehicles I’ve seen in three hours are plows. So far, so awesome!

#Nemo 2130: there are currently five dads and a dog sledding down our street. Wouldn’t the kids be jealous if they were still awake!!

There was no chance of this picture coming out as seen by the human eye

#Nemo midnight: I have a table full of men eating pancakes and discussing Superman movies – after 2 hours of sledding. The snow is taller than the top step and falling fast. The windows are opaque with blown snow and ice. The wind is howling. The children are sleeping. Life is very, very good.

Mastermind and Minion

My eldest son snitched the “Essential Calvin and Hobbes” from next to my bed when he was five years old. I caught him poring over the adventures of the older boy and his striped companion, and loomed over him with mixed feelings. On the one hand, yay love of reading! On the other hand, Calvin is not an ideal role model. On the third tail I’ve always promised myself that – like my parents – I would only make access harder to books that really do damage. I simply hadn’t planned on my non-censorious resolve being tested before my son started first grade.

But there was my spiky-haired son, putting on his best space alien accent and saying “Dat darn Kalfin! He stole ma space chip!” I forked over the complete collection.

He was quoting this tonight, and I swear I hadn't mentioned it. — He was quoting this tonight, and I swear I hadn’t mentioned it.

When you think about Calvin (as a grownup who may or may not spend too much time thinking about Calvin and Hobbes), you think of a kid who drives his parents nuts, does poorly in school and has behavior problems. But when you return with fresh eyes and see what Calvin DOES in the panorama of his time and tale, you begin to wish your son was – and could be – more like Calvin. Calvin has *time* and freedom. He wanders the woods with only a fearsome predator for company. He has long leisurely afternoons for the creation of mutant snow goons. He exercises his vast and untrammeled imagination in a whole panoply of joyful childish pursuits, many of which my poor son is forebarred from by shifting culture and a mother who works. There is no circumstance under which my seven year old would spend a whole afternoon playing with a little creek running through mud. He doesn’t have that much free time, and I am more constrained to periodically check on him.

The book was next to my bed, which explains the odd lighting.

But Calvin is teaching Grey what it could mean to be a little boy, and fires his imagination. Grey considers his circumstance, and finds his own way to be, well, an Evil Mastermind (of the amusing, kind, relatively-well-behaved type).

This Calvinic mischief was brought to mind the other night. Grey has a tremendous advantage over Calvin. Although entirely lacking in feline company, Grey has instead a little brother who is his willing and eager minion in acts of creative mischief. How joyful are those two boys in their shared universe! Anyway, the other night the boys were doing their usual delaying song and dance regarding sleep. Basically, it was part of our intricate tradition of them not going to sleep when I’ve told them to go to sleep already. At one point they came downstairs and demanded that I set up a tent for them to sleep in. (In truth, my actual challenges getting Grey to sleep are worthy of a serious post. But it’s funny in small moments.) This demand arrived at the point at which I had HAD ENOUGH ALREADY JUST GO TO BED AND IF YOU DON’T YOU’LL BE SLEEPING IN THE BASEMENT NEXT TO THE WORM BIN!

There was thumping upstairs after my chastened (so I thought) sons went back, but no more demands were lobbied by the prepubescent set, so I declared myself satisfied.

When we went in to kiss them good night, however, an astonishing feat of architecture met our eyes. Sadly, I could find no angle of photography that would take in the full glory but imagine this.

You walk into the room, and the wall appears suddenly several feet nearer, and covered in blue stars. You realize that blessed children have stood Thane’s mattress on it’s side. (I swear this is why I won’t buy either of them a proper bed.)

You are convinced that shortly your children will be squashed by said mattress and tiptoeing up you check out the situation. The brothers – the Lego Mastermind and his brother the Builder Minion, have used the kiddie chairs in the room to ensure their sleep remains unsquished. They lie in opposite sides of the “fort”, in a stuffed-animal-and-blanket filled enclosure.

The Minion, in Scooby Doo PJs, protected by the Green IKEA chair

Isn’t this what childhood is all about, my friends? The problem solving? The rule-breaking ingenuity? The ability to sleep on a pile of stuffed animals right next to your brother? Perhaps Calvin taught my son a bit of what was possible. I can’t regret it. And I can’t wait until Thane is old enough to read it too.

The Mastermind, with fuzzy dinosaur blanket and Puppy on a white chair.

MLK day at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

Thane is skeptical about the red-sweater dress code

This Martin Luther King Jr. Day we headed to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. We have an embarrassment of riches in Boston, when it comes to great museums, which is my only excuse for never before having come to this particular museum. Also, there are no mummies. There was a time in my life where this meant a great deal. (See also: last year.) But finally the right moment came to take the trip to Cambridge and check it out!

The trip started, as most trips to Cambridge do, at Alewife. The kids still find the T to be an enjoyable and novel experience. Tragically, they do not have the cultural background to spend the entire T ride humming “Charlie on the MTA” the way I did for the first, oh, five years I lived in Boston.

Adam works in Cambridge, and I have been there pretty often. It was therefore quite surprising to realize neither one of us had ever been to Harvard Square. We walked through it – as the fastest way to get to the museum. I kept waiting to feel smarter. Instead, I mostly felt like a Japanese tourist.

The museum was a delight. It was 50% modern museum with excellent interpretations done by people with PhDs in interpretations designed to be interactive for the target demographic. Basically – a great modern museum. But the other 50% was the creepy, paper-noted, formaldehyde-ridden, dusty, wooden, ancient and slightly menacing type of museum right out of Lovecraft. The air smelled of ancient radiators and the banisters were worn from use and there were rooms with mysterious brass plaques on the front door. One of the volunteers admitted her entire motivation was to get into the back rooms – closed to the public – and see what was there. It was very cool.

Lovecraftian: evolution as shown through skulls.

There were also lots of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are really cool. Oh, and a coelecanth! (Not living, obviously. But, er, recentish?!)

After we did the “dead animals” side of the museum, we went over to the “interesting rocks” side. Bridging the gap between the two was an amazing room full of glass flowers. The crazy thing about these flowers is you would never ever ever believe they were glass. They were astonishingly realistic. Such a thing was a vast labor. It will never be done again – we have no need. We can photograph and freeze dry and sequence dna and do all manner of communicating and saving information on plants. But this tremendous artistry attempted to faithfully reproduce the ephemeral. It’s remarkable.

The minerals rooms was particularly fun since we’d just seen a very similar (much more modern) exhibit at the Tellus museum. Adam liked the natural fiberglass best. I liked this stunning piece. I’m pretty sure that my mother-in-law would turn it into a necklace if she could

In the final room – about climate change – I actually learned something completely new. I had no idea that earth’s orbit was erratic over tens of thousands of years. I thought our orbit was pretty stable – other than annual variations.

We did wander a bit through the Peabody Museum (they flow into each other), but lunch beckoned. We found ourselves with two rather tired hungry kids at a local Cambridge landmark.

We had to explain who Johnny Cash was, because Thane was in his seat.

We ended the trip just sitting on these really cool old shoeshine booths in the Starbucks at Cambridge Square – just sitting together and talking and watching the world go by. I need more days like that in my life.

You can see all my pictures of the last, um, week here!

Fifteen minutes of internet fame

About two weeks ago, I sat down and wrote the blog post that was rattling around in my brain about the Discovery Show Deadliest Catch. It took a little longer than my average blog post to write (I mean… I had to do RESEARCH! And PROOFREAD! The horrors!) I clicked publish with a sense of satisfaction and moved on with my life.

Then, the next day, this happened:

Best Blog Day Ever: My post got retweeted by one of the Deadliest Catch Captains

There was squeeing on my part. I called my sister. Then I watched the traffic grow. Before the day was over, I’d hit 355 hits – over 100 more than my best day ever. I settled, self-satisfied, into a good night’s sleep.

The next day, traffic was tailing off. That’s the way it normally goes: I write a post, everyone who reads me comes to read it, it fades away. I enjoyed my good day. I went home. Being a 21st century mom, I checked my email while dinner sizzled on the stove. I noticed I had a comment on my post! Nice! Wait, 2 comments! Three! Um, sixteen? I only get about one comment per 100 views, and if that held steady… uh, hold on, gotta go check my stats.

And it was off! I got 37 comments, 10,000 hits (10% of my overall total, and I started this blog in 2008), and tons of views. It got picked up and passed on and retweeted. After long thought, I broke my own personal “fourth wall” and sent it to the content manager for my company blog, where the article was reposted. It came to the attention of my management, and they were very nice about it. (Which says more about how nice my management is than anything else!) I also got approached by the staff of the Cornelia Marie blog (which was responsible for a ton of the traffic) asking to republish the article.

That made me stop to think. Did it support my goals to have my writing rebroadcast on another site? Ummmm, what were my goals again? It’s a worthwhile question. I don’t have any sponsorship (I’ve never even got hit-up by those folks who court mommybloggers.) I don’t think I really want any sponsorship (a stance that might be challenged by someone actually offering sponsorship). I don’t really want to be a famous or professional blogger. I’m not nearly funny enough (I’m both autobiographical and sentimental). I dislike controversy and fighting, which are staples of the modern internet.

So why do I write, to the tune of about 80 posts a year on this blog alone? Well, you know how successful authors – when asked how to write – often say that they write because not writing is not an option? It turns out that can be true for rather more modestly successful writers. It’s important to my mental state to write.

In addition to providing an outlet for me, this blog plays other roles. It’s how I tell my family what is going on in my life. It is a bit of a family history, where I record the important things that happen (or at least, non-embarrassing important things) in the life of my family. I capture story-snapshots of what it is to be me at a given point. I also have a chance to articulate and make more real some of the ephemeral moments and thoughts that flit across my mind. For some of my readers, my blog creates a relationship. I met a mom at Chuck E Cheese at Grey’s birthday, who recognized me because she reads my blog. It keeps me closer to people I care about.

And – I’ll admit – I’ve always hoped that some of my writing would “go viral”. And that’s just what happened. Now, I’m a sophisticated enough internetian to know that writing popularity is so often a double-edged sword, with high readership accompanied by nasty comments. But the Deadliest Catch readership appears to be entirely populated by nice, positive people (based on the feedback I got).

So what’s my thesis? Just that… man! That rocked! It was totally fun! I got all the upside I dream of in my happier writing moments, and none of the downside that so often accompanies internet fame. So unless the Discovery Channel picks up the post and it goes onto one other wave of fame, it’s likely over and time to move on with narrating my exhilarating life of jam, football and kids. But boy, was that fun!

WordPress does a nice job of providing statistics and analysis on their blogs (secret: every blogger I know watches their statistics with a hawk-like eye). Their year-end analysis of my blog didn’t seem particularly insightful this year, so I didn’t share it at the time, but it seems like a relevant baseline to this post. I still find it highly ironic that one of my top search terms is “today sucks” since – in general – I feel like I write pretty positive and cheerful stuff!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 18,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 4 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Leadership Secrets of Deadliest Catch

I am one of millions of Americans who love the Discovery Channel show Deadliest Catch. For those of you who are not familiar with it, it’s a show about Bering Sea Crab fishermen. It follows five boats over two fishing seasons a year (King Crab and Opies). It is a show about a grueling, heart-breaking, back-breaking, fraught and dangerous life perched on the icy deck of a lonely boat on the southern edges of the arctic.

On my bad days, I watch it to remind myself of how good I have it. Most of the time, though, I watch it to keep me company while I do the laundry. I did about 5 hours of laundry in the last four days, and finished up through season 7. Now, I work in software. You can hardly get farther from the Bering Sea than my comfy cube in Boston’s “Innovation District”. But I still think there are some true leadership secrets buried in the ice up there.

1) Find your Freddie and keep him forever

Freddy — Freddie Maughtai of the FV Cornelia Marie (now on the Wizard)

Every group of people wishes they had a Freddie. He’s always early on deck. Once there, he moves with quickness, alacrity and skill. I’ve never seen him slip and fall, and I’ve never seen him dawdle. He knows his job, and he does it well. Just that much makes Freddie a good deck hand (and anyone who’s watched the show knows that being a good deck hand is really hard to do.) What makes Freddie a great deck hand is what he does for morale. He never complains, at all. He rarely makes a negative comment, even when it’s blowing ice and -10 degrees and he hasn’t slept in 23 hours. But best of all, he can and does turn the morale of an entire boat. Freddie never talks about *bad* luck, but after hauling a string of empty crab pots, he’ll pull out the ol’ clippers and give everyone a good-luck mohawk, or smear his face with cod blood (he’s Samoan) and convince the whole crew that the next string is going to be better. Most of the time it even works. Freddie not only is the best, he brings the best out in others.

Freddie was also a byword for loyalty… right up until he could no longer afford to stay on the Cornelia Marie. Even with his huge heart and deep love for the Harris family, he still needed to make a rational decision to earn more money on the Wizard. And of course, with his tremendous skills, practically every boat on the Bering Sea was open to him.

Leader Lesson: If you find a person who is not only great themselves, but makes the others around them work harder and better, consider them one of your greatest assets – and treat them like it. Make sure you never stomp on their optimism or cheer. Make sure you give them enough latitude to work their wonders. And make sure you never pit their loyalty to you against their good sense.

Worker Lesson: The difference between good and great isn’t how much you can accomplish. You can’t be great unless your team works better because of your participation in it. That means less whining, less following negative energy trends, and less doing-what-everyone else does. Instead, try to change the tenor of a negative team to be more positive (even if that means giving yourself a mohawk), and try to build on the energy of a positive team. Of course, none of that counts for squat if you can’t get the basics of your own job done.

2) Buy fireworks ahead of time

In the Season 7 finale, the boys on the Time Bandit are coming into Dutch Harbor flush with victory – their ship totally crammed with fine-looking crabs. After they got Captain Sig Hanson “good” earlier (in a prank that involved having imported Chinese lanterns and sending them out over sea and turning out their lights – scaring the pants off our favorite wily Norwegian), Sig ambushed the boys with fireworks. (I must say, it’s kind of fun to watch people do something downright dangerous and inadvisable and not be told even once not to try this at home.) The Time Bandit returned fire. After a bit, both ships turned their fireworks skyward for an amazing display of pyrotechnics outside of Dutch Harbor.

Now, you could say this was a waste of money. Fireworks are expensive. And if the ship wasn’t full, what was there to celebrate? And if the ship was full, then surely just giving the guys wads of cash was enough celebration, right? But no. The very best of the fishing vessels on the Bering PLAN TO CELEBRATE SUCCESS. They buy those fireworks and bring them to the edge of Alaska at no small expense. The chance to earn tens of thousands of dollars are the reason that those fishermen work through injury, pain, cold, danger and sea-cooking… but adding a joyful celebration of success makes it about more than just the money. It creates a sense of pride, of joy, of celebration and of cameraderie that sets a boat apart. It makes the crew not folks employed in the fishing industry, but fishermen.

Leader Lesson: If you want your crew to treat their job as more than a financial transaction for cash, then don’t just reward your crew with cash. Plan on celebrating their successes in ways that are exhilarating, communal and right as they cross a finish line. If you can work in a method of celebration that would not be possible anywhere else in the world, it’s a bonus.

Worker Lesson: Life is much more rewarding when you work for a company that sees the works you are all engaged in as more than a financial transaction. Of course it is that (See Freddie above), but you spend too much of your life there to put up with a workplace that only has a paycheck to offer.

3) Pick a good captain

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the captains in Deadliest Catch. I think half of America still misses Phil Harris – his earthly, twinkle-in-the-eye wisdom, kindness, temper and vices. Sig Hanson is a manipulative, masochistic jerk… who still keeps his crew safe and his tanks stacked. Keith of the Wizard is a good Captain with good intentions, a gigantic chip on his shoulder and a completely out-of-control temper who gets his crew a full year’s salary in two months work. The Hillstrand brothers share a wheelhouse (although only one of them is ever captain in a particular season). There are a bevy of others: Wild Bill, Elliot…

And I’ve thought a lot about who I would want to work for, in the completely impossible outcome that I was forced to fish the Bering Sea.

Again – there’s that difference between sheer moolah and what it means to work. Those top captains will bring home similar paydays, between $30 and $70k for a fishing season. But if you work for Sig, you can expect to “grind” (work exceptionally long hours), be belittled and mocked, and to fear the anger of the captain. Although he offers a great payday, I don’t think I could handle working for Sig. (In the unlikely event that, you know, I could hack the other parts of the fishing.) Keith would drive me crazy – he’s too mercurial.

If I had to pick a boat, I would definitely pick the Time Bandit. In addition to being excellent fishermen who consistently earn greaty paydays for their crew, the Hillstrand brothers are smart about risking their crew’s well-being. They have a gift for morale, too. In situations where the other captains would explode at their crews, with yelling and puffing and pulling rank… the Hillstrand brothers will pull a prank or a joke that works 1000 times better. There’s nothing like throwing a string of firecrackers on deck to wake up a lethargic crew! They also do a great of job of celebrating their ship and their crew. And having two of them means that they have a backup plan and make better decisions.

Leader Lesson: It’s not JUST about the outcomes you create, it’s also about the experience your team has in their work. Given the same money, most people would rather work for a reasonable boss who solves problems in ways other than yelling.

4) Bring passion

No one who has watched the show for more than an episode could doubt one thing: Jake Anderson has a fire in his belly to become a fisherman, and to some day captain his own boat. From the first episode, while he was still a greenhorn, he was angling to be driving the boat. He’s worked his rear end off every single episode to attempt to earn that right. His relations got him ON the boat, but he has no capital, no inheritance, no education…. nothing that would ever get him into that captain’s chair other than his own burning passion.

I believe that Jake will make it someday for one primary reason: he wants it so badly, and so clearly. He asks Sig practically every episode to push him further, to show him more, to teach him. He asked for the difficult task of steering a multi-million dollar boat into St. Paul Harbor, risking not just the ship but the lives of those on board if he messes up. How many of us would be brave enough to ask to do that? And Sig, after about 8 rethinks, lets him. And he does a fine job: showing himself as material for that chair eventually. Sig gets him up after only 2 hours sleep following a 30 hour shift. Instead of complaining bitterly (which is what I would do), Jake says happily, “It says a lot, that he thought of me.” If your bosses know how badly you want it, that helps. If you keep volunteering to do hard things in pursuit of a goal, that helps more. If you don’t complain about the hard work it takes to get your goal, that helps most.

Of course, it also helps that Jake knows so clearly what he wants.

Leader Lesson: If you have someone who brings this kind of passion to mastering their business, adopt them and make them like your own child. Give them hard tasks (but ones they can accomplish). And promote them for their excellence.

Worker Lesson: Figure out what it is you want. Let your bosses know what that thing is. Remind them regularly. Ask to do the things that role will require. Get any certifications you would require. And be persistent. When you do finally get the chance – even if it’s at 2 am after a 30 hour shift – feel proud. Don’t complain.

This is probably the one I have the most work to do on.

Edit: In case you’re waiting with bated breath, the 2013 Deadliest Catch season starts April 16th, 2013 – Tuesdays, 9 p.m. ET on the Discovery Channel. Put it on your calendar!