Painting Goodbyes

My dad suffered “a shower of strokes” this week, due to a clotting disorder caused by the cancer that he’s been battling for nearly six months now. For the last two days, he has been confused, not knowing what year it is or where he is, although most of the time he knows who we are. He will respond appropriately to yes or no questions but does not initiate conversation at all. Dad, as a former math teacher and current financial planner, cannot subtract 13 from 27. This evening he told me that the President was Eddie Van Halen. It has been a sad and harrowing few days to say the least.

Part of the process of diagnosing the cause of dad’s confusion was an MRI of his brain. This was the first time he’d been apart from my mom after 24 hours in the hospital. After the test, the tech took mom to where dad was waiting on his gurney. He had his right hand up in the air, in a loose fist, and he seemed to be looking at his thumb as he flicked his wrist around. Mom asked him what he was doing.

“Painting,” he said.

“What are you painting?” she asked.

He responded, “Goodbyes.”

If these walls could talk

As we prepare to leave this house, the walls are talking to me, reminding me of all that has happened over the eight years that we have lived here. This is the house where O learned to ride a bike, swing a bat, and kick a goal. From here we went to Gymboree, Kindermusik, library story time, soccer, baseball, Tae Kwon Do, swimming lessons, Cub Scouts, choir, Chess Club, auditions, rehearsals, and plays. We spent our summers at the FOHA pool, VBS, Camp Invention, baseball games, Cub Scout Day Camp, and in backyard sprinklers. In this yard, we enjoyed toasting marshmallows on our firepit, slip & sliding, playing ghost in the graveyard, and planting watermelon seeds. It was here that we laughed so hard when Uncle Chris hit Baba with the waffle ball on Gumpa’s 60th birthday. And it was in this house that we cried together when Gumpa was diagnosed with cancer.

In this house, we all grew up. O celebrated eight birthdays here, with friends & family, magicians, water balloon fights, Blue, Thomas, the Rescue Heroes, and Star Wars. Here he had his last bottle, ate his first Oreo, and eventually learned to pack his own lunch. I don’t dare estimate the number of boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese I’ve cooked in this house! O lost his first tooth here, and he also grew old enough to know there was no Tooth Fairy. Or Santa. P & I became thirty-somethings. P went through the adult right-of-passage of losing a job, and after three months of “free agency” took the leap of faith that has now grown into an amazing career. I ran a creative business that I enjoyed at the time, only to later find my true calling working with preschoolers. We joined an amazing church, where we grew in our faith and learned the true meaning of the phrase “church family.”

In this house we celebrated nine Christmases, our 10th wedding anniversary, the birth of our niece, and the promise of our nephew. We dyed Easter eggs, Trick or Treated, and made Valentines. We hosted gatherings of PEOs, Butterflies, KDs, the McIntosh Clan, MOPS, playgroups, and many dear friends. We mourned the loss of beloved relatives, friends’ pregnancies, and a few marriages. In this house we have laughed, cried, eaten, drank, and played with some of the best friends we’ve ever had. And we have faith that those friendships, firmly planted here, will continue to bloom no matter where life takes us.

This has been our house, but SPandOLand is wherever we are together. And as I say goodbye to this house, I will look forward to hearing what the walls of our new house will have to say to me.

Something(s) Beautiful

Until I logged on this morning, I had no idea how long it had been since I’d blogged. Halloween? Wow... so much has happened since then that was certainly blog-worthy, but lately I struggle to be quippy and light when many days I cannot shake off the lead boots of life-as-it-is-now. And who wants to read downer blog posts? I don’t want to write them, so I can’t imagine anyone wants to read them!
But this morning’s after-run cool-down playlist offered a burst of inspiration. The Killers “Smile Like You Mean It” was my anthem through the holidays, reminding me to try to find the sweet in the overwhelming bitter-sweet. This morning as I listened to the song again, I thought that maybe I could reenter the blogosphere with some of those sweet things. So, here is my list of some of the many beautiful things I was blessed to encounter since Halloween…

• Fighting my way back after bronchitis to be a stronger, faster runner than I was before I got sick. The old me would have given up.
• An Indian Summer day’s hike in the Cleveland Metroparks with very good friends
• A visit with my dad’s sisters, who I don’t see nearly enough, and listening to the three siblings reminisce over a giant stack of old pictures
• Drinking champagne in a limo as we rode downtown to see Wicked for my dear friend Jill's 40th birthday
• The Christmas Eve services at church and being keenly aware of the love of that church family for my family
• Having Jill’s husband, who is a pilot, so calmly arrange for P to fly home the weekend of O’s school play, when I-90 was closed. I completely lost it, but Doug was the calm in my storm.
• Watching O in that play, so confident and comfortable, so happy on stage
• My friend Sue's Split-Pea Soup, which is deliciously seasoned with love
• My sister-in-law’s baby bump…. And my mom’s reaction to learning the gender of that bambino
• Being the respite & refuge for my brother-in-law, his wife, and my sweet niece while they mourned the loss of Erika’s grandmother the week after Christmas

But nothing topped the beauty of my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. My brother & I contacted as many friends & family as we could find, asking them to send anniversary greetings. It was a gift just to see the love pour in from near & far, past & present. But to be there with mom & dad on their anniversary while they opened the box-of-love that we had assembled, well, that was one of the most beautiful things ever.

Happy Halloween from Mount Olympus

Here we are... Poseidon, Percy Jackson and the godess Athena

a la The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan.

Never read it? We are (obviously) big fans!

Percy with Riptide

A sugar rush fit for a demi-god

The Nut Wizards

I am always amazed at the ingenius solutions that people invent to solve even the most mundane problems. Here's one I wish I had thought of... the Nut Wizard! And not just because I think the brainstorming session they had to name it must have been a laugh-riot, but because it is pure genius.
The Nut Wizard is like a sideways whisk on a long handle. You roll it over the ground to pick up whatever pesky nuts litter your yard. In this case, we were de-acorning mom & dad's yard. But the Wizards also work for golf balls and Hickory nuts (we borrowed them from friends who have a Hickory nut bonanza). Amazingly, the tool traps the nuts so that as you roll it to pick up more, they don't fall out. So simple! Why hadn't I thought of this?!? Here's P demonstrating his highly efficient double-fisted technique....
And the victors with their spoils (one of many buckets we filled)...

And our trusty supervisor, undoubtedly thinking that if he had a nickel for every acorn we collected, he'd be a millionaire!

Of course, no Sunday afternoon at mom & dad's would be complete without a belly-stuffing meal. Here's Baba and her sous chef whipping up some delicious mashed potatoes to complement the turkey breast in the foreground.

After lunch, P set up mom & dad's new WebCam and their Skype account. For those of you far-away folks who'd like some face-to-face time with them, drop us an email and we'll give you their Skype ID. And ours, if you want it. Skype is free, easy to use, and lots of fun. Hope to see you on the internet soon!

Riding the Scrambler

Typically, I avoid using carnival rides as metaphors for life, what with the carnie at the controls and all… but this one fits. The Scrambler is a perennial favorite in our clan. Here we are—three generations preparing to ride it just this past June.

The Scrambler, in case you’re not a carnival regular, involves three arms with four cars each, all spinning around a central pole. As your car spins in one direction, the ride as a whole rotates in the opposite direction, all at increasing speed. It gives you the illusion that you will slam into the other cars, and you are smushed into the people in the car with you despite your best efforts to defy the forces. You are simultaneously giggling with glee and a little terrified. Plus the spinning makes you wish you hadn’t just eaten that Elephant Ear. But deep down you trust that you’re ok because you know that the steel beams will hold you, you’ve got buddies in your car, and they wouldn’t really make a ride that slammed you into the other riders, right?

So, here we are in life, spinning around in so many directions over the last week. We are being propelled at speeds we cannot control through tests and diagnoses and prognoses and real estate and jobs and homework and life. Most of the time all we can do is hold on, try not to throw up, and hope we don’t slam too hard into the other riders in our car. Sometimes we scream in terror, and sometimes we get to laugh through the fear, like when the Cancer Support Team Nurse jokes with dad that her specialty is constipation, and he dead-pans back, “No shit.” Oh yes, he did.

And eventually you find that you really CAN trust that in the end you’re going to be ok on this ride, because the steel of grace surrounds you. You feel it when you overhear your nine-year-old say to his grandfather on the phone, “I’m just so disappointed that you have cancer.” And you know that you have raised a child with the emotional intelligence to persevere.

Or you feel it when, on his way to a training class in Michigan, your husband’s route takes him past the hospital just after dad’s first Oncology appointment, and so he is there at precisely the moment you need him. And he is able to reschedule the training class and spend the next day at home with you, crying and talking and planning how you will navigate this new normal.

And you know it when, after she’s already graced you by keeping your son occupied all afternoon so that you can go to the Oncologist with your parents, your dear friend has made you soup. And since the food is there, you eat. And your other friends call you, and email you, and take you to lunch, and just know you well enough to know how to love you through this.

But you especially know it when, just when you start to feel a little sorry for yourself, your dad states plainly that he refuses to feel sorry for himself, and you again have the strength to hold on, even with the spinning and the fear and the forces pushing against you.

For those of you who are wondering how to help, I highly recommend the website Circus of Cancer. I learned about it when a dear friend loaned me the book The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan, which I also recommend. I just didn’t know when I read it that the information would come in so handy, so soon.

Family

Call it a clan,

call it a network,

call it a tribe,

call it a family.

Whatever you call it,

whoever you are,

you need one.

~Jane Howard

Oh, Canada!

I know, I know.... I promised pictures of each day's fun. And I took MANY--daily!--until the whole new job-sell house-move family craziness began. Perhaps some day, I'll post a summer-o-fun II retrospective of sorts. But for today, you get Canada.

On our latest trip to the Empire State, we took along our brand-spankin'-new passports, and they burned such a hole in our pockets that as soon as we were within just a few miles of a border crossing, we had to go!!

Turns out, the Canadians frown upon the spontaneous international trip with your child. Something about making sure that the child in the backseat actually belongs to you, and that the other parent is aware of your taking him across the border, and why aren't you all traveling together today, and why aren't you traveling with a note from his father?!? Oh, but by the power of the dimple in the backseat, we charmed our way into Ontario. We spent a total of 30 minutes and $4.62 US in the great white north, but judging by O's smile and pure joy, you would have thought we were on and all-expenses-paid trip to the moon.

Here he is at Old Fort Erie, the nearest tourist attraction we could find. (We passed on the Duty Free shop).

And with the ironically named Peace Bridge,

our point of stressful entry.

Fun o' Plenty in Week Two

June 11th--Because it was O's BFF Jeff who staged this shot, I'm pretty sure one clone trooper is telling the other clone trooper some kind of poop joke. Just a guess...

June 12th--These clowns were my lunchdates. Then O & I headed to the First Ladies' National Historic Site for a(nother) tour of the Saxton House. Happy Birthday to Mrs. McKinley!

June 13th--Where else can you get face-painted with a Village People fumanchu moustache and retrieve giant Pez from a paper-mache Barack Obama Pez dispenser?

Parade the Circle+festival+the Hursts=GREAT FUN!!

June 14th--O got to have tons of fun today, but all we got to do was paint the dining room.

June 15th--Who ya gonna call? Your buddy Alex, whose grandpa has a friend who owns THE Ghostbusters car. O and pals got to go on the ride of their lives!

June 16th--Checking out the swimming lake with Baba.

Verdict: squishy and stinky. Digging in the sand on the shore is tons-o-fun, though!

June 17th--Maggie's SpongeBob birthday fiesta!

Signs of Summer

Memorial Day Weekend is the official start of summer around here. We managed to pack in lots of our favorite people, places and events this weekend, and I'm going to save several thousand words by using pictures to tell the story....

First baseball game of 2009

Here's O with Orbit at the FCC outing to the Aeros game on Friday night.

P enjoying the game and the company!

First Buehler's $1.00 cone/cup of 2009... but certainly not the last!

First cookout of 2009!
We had friends over after going to see Night at the Museum II,
which got 30 thumbs up from our crowd of 15.


Marching in the Memorial Day parade

Spectating at the Memorial Day parade. Did I mention I love parades?

Celebrating Gumpa's birthday with Blizzards at DQ.

Hooray for SUMMER!

Holiday Highlights

Oh, I had high hopes of blogging a lot over break, but alas we were just too busy having FUN. This was a great break for all of us, with the following highlights...

• Uncle Chris & Aunt Patty surprising us on Christmas Day
• Christmas eve candlelight service at FCC
• Reading Christmas cards from lots of folks we wish we saw more often! If you're wondering, we haven't sent any yet. I'm thinking about Valentines this year...
• Rollerskating with friends and O learning to skate without holding onto the wall
• Peppermint ice cream & Magic Shell sundaes and Christmas cookies
• Weekend trip to Cincinnati to see the whole McCoy clan, especially the adorable Miss Sophie (no offense to the rest of you, but she is just so stinkin' cute!!!)
  

• Getting a Wii for Christmas and playing it A LOT
• P having two four-day weekends in a row--unprecedented!
• Going to see The Tale of Despereaux and eating movie popcorn for dinner
• Playdates, playdates & more playdates
• Going to the Cavs game on Christmas night with Baba & Gumpa. The view from P's work seats is pretty awesome, or so I hear... I spent a relaxing evening alone at home while the boys and my folks cheered the night away with LeBron & co. This was the ultimate win-win situation!!
• Watching O watch Star Wars III for the first time--pure joy!
• Uh, duh.... presents!!!
• Helping Gumpa put together his & Baba's Christmas present (a grill) and bringing home a really awesome box to play with
• P's delicious chocolate cake... mmm.... which we had for breakfast one morning!
• Finding my grandparents' "Parents' Album" from my parents' wedding (and some other awesome old family photos) in a box that I'd neglected for too long
• Ringing in a new year. I love the anticipation of what the new year will hold, the clean slate, the possibilities...

From SPandO to all our friends... our best wishes for a fabulous 2009!

Hope, in tents and otherwise

Hope has been all around us lately. It hit a zenith at about 11:01 pm on November 4th, and we're still riding that wave. As my dear friend Jill said, "Hope.... now I have some!" And I believe the text from Patty was, "Wooooooooo Hooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!" So, that about sums it up!!

Then last weekend we delivered our church's Tent of Hope to the National Mall where we set it up with other tents from all over the country. And I gotta say, it's easy to be hopeful when it's 75 and sunny in November! As always, DC brings out the presidential hopes of a certain eight year old boy, and with the excitement over the recent election this was no exception. So there were a lot of "When I'm President..." declarations while we strolled the city. In addition to the Tents of Hope festivities, on this trip we... took in the Pompeii exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, toured the Captial Building (so cool), picked John Jay's nose in the Supreme Court (family tradition), marveled at the Jefferson Memorial, browsed Thomas Jefferson's book collection at the Library of Congress, picniced on the mall, walked the dog, pushed Sophie's stroller all over Pennsylvania Avenue, hung out with our awesome brothers and their fabulous wives, ate too much, slept too little, played Wii, played with Sophie, and had yet another awesome DC weekend. It never disappoints!!

Oh, and we took 587 pictures. Gotta love digital! So P put together a video story with pics from the Gathering of the Tents. Turn up your volume and enjoy!

Cub Scout Family Campout

Okay, well here is my first ever blog. This is P, often referred to but rarely heard from. I would like to share our weekend adventure.

O and I went on the Cub Scout Family Campout at Camp Manatoc in Peninsula, OH. The weather was supposed to be sunny and mid- to high-50’s. We arrived early Saturday morning, around 8:45a, to find the brave campers who stayed Friday night enjoying some camp breakfast (hash browns, eggs in bag, bacon, coffee and hot chocolate). Since we had already eaten, we skipped the opportunity to feast on some fine campfire cuisine. Around 9:15a, we hooked up with O’s old den and walked over to see the “Jamboree on the Air” ham station setup at one of the pavilions. The guy talked for about 45 minutes while the kids asked great questions like “when can we talk to someone” and “if you get too close to the antenna, can you feel the radio waves?” After running out of patience for a non-alien voice to appear over the 40M band, we hiked on to the obstacle course. O scaled the climbing wall and then ran over to the balance beam. He fell off once, but then made it all the way across!

Temp 50-ish. We hiked back to camp around 11:30a for our foil pack lunch. Adult leaders were thawing hamburgers over the open fire that could be combined with some of the frozen vegetables in the pack and cooked. I was thinking about a hamburger until someone inquired as to the whereabouts of a family who had attended last year. Another adult responded that after the extreme intestinal disorder the entire family experienced last year, they were not coming this year. Needless to say, O had the frozen veggies with some butter in his foil pack and I had two pre-cooked hot dogs in mine.

Temp still 50-ish, maybe a little colder in the shade. After lunch, we met up with O’s den and completed the Map & Compass belt loop. One of the dads is a pilot and was happy to share his knowledge. After much running around, we packed our hiking gear around 2:15p to begin bearing 140⁰ SE to the rifle range. Things were a bit backlogged, so we hiked over to a quarry and the scouts ran around for another 20 minutes or so. We hiked back to the range where each scout got to shoot a Daisy pump-action, single shot BB gun. O did really well, hitting a ping-pong ball three times, a soda can once, and the paper target three times. (Takes after his championship marksman Granddad.) I think I once hit a wooden clothespin with a BB from about 15yards away back home in the Nati…

Temp is now in the 40s. After the BB range, we went back to camp, ran around and then prepared for the spaghetti dinner that was going to be served by the Girl Scouts who camped with us. They boiled mass quantities of spaghetti in zip-loc bags, made some meat sauce and garlic bread, and put together a salad (from bags, not from nature). By the time we walked from the serving table to the eating area around the campfire, dinner was cold. O choked down most of his, I ate the rest, and then tried to get a warm plate of my own. Again, cold by the time I sat down.

Temp is still in the 40s, but getting colder. After eating, the kids ran around again and then around 6pm we lined up for our tickets to the Haunted Hayride at Camp Butler. We carpooled with O’s friend Alex and his dad (who works for P’s company’s primary competitor) and got in line for the hayride. Another dad sought out a hayride worked and asked about the start time for the rides. He was told, very specifically, that the rides would begin at the exact hour of dark o’clock. Well, on this day, dark o’clock occurred around 8pm. While we waited, the scouts ran around eating donuts and spraying each other with silly string. The hayride was fun, not too scary because of the extreme age range for the kids. We left Camp Butler and headed back to Camp Manatoc in the pitch black night.

By now it was probably in the 30’s and dark. Not city dark, but country, campground, kind of scary dark. O was exhausted, as was I, and did not seem very excited about the dump cake dessert (cake mix, pie filling and 7-up). He asked to go to bed, and I agreed. We crawled into the sleeping bags and O fell asleep almost instantly. We wore thermal undies, sweatpants, socks, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and knit caps. Throughout the night, we heard coyotes, people, raccoons, and lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Okay, maybe not the lions and tigers, but there was something making a nice scratching noise right outside our tent.

When we awoke, the temp had to be below 30. There was frost everywhere, but all that was cold was my little nose that had no protection. We had made it through the night, and went out to see what everyone else was doing. There was a healthy mix of campers who were prepared for the cold and those who were not. I felt bad for the people who were cold, because it was really, really cold. We packed everything up and came home around 9:30a. Around the fire in the morning, some of the Webelos dads were talking about their winter campout in January called Klondikes. Personally, I will need some serious practice to be ready for camping in January. Thankfully, I have a couple of years to prepare. All in all, it was fun to be in the wild with O and do the scouting activities.

The Top 4 Things about Family Campout
4. Gettin’ jiggy with nature – raccoons and other wildlife, inches from my head making squeaky and scratchy noises, outside the tent looking for food and such to feast on for the evening.
3. The amazing acoustical dynamics of the campsite – snoring from tents 100 yards away that could be heard everywhere around the site.
2. Authentic camp food – like hot chocolate, Entenmann’s donuts, cereal in the mini box with milk from a gallon jug, and frozen broccoli/carrots/peas. Compared to the stuff that Survivorman Les Stroud eats (ants, plant leaves, tree bark, crayfish, and other natural delicacies), I guess we did not have it too bad.
And….

1. Spending 25 quality hours with O, doing new stuff!

Great 8th Birthday

Having a summer birthday is really a lot of fun!! This year, O's big 8th birthday coinsided with some McFamily coming into town (Nana & Grand-dad, Auntie E, Uncle Ry and Sophie). So we invited a few good friends and Baba & Gumpa to join the McCrowd to celebrate on Saturday afternoon. We had a few of O's favorite foods for lunch-- pizza, watermelon, DQ cake--and then headed outside for a big giant water battle and some slip'n'sliding. As you see in the pics, kids of ALL ages had a ball!

On the actual birthday day, Baba & I took the b-day boy to the Science Center. We got to explore the exhibits, watch an IMAX movie, learn about Einstein, and explore the Mather. We topped the afternoon off with a humongous sundae at the Honey Hut. In the evening we had dinner at Applebee's, ate some more ice cream, and opened presents with Daddy. We even managed to squeeze in a little Playstation Indiana Jones between birthday greeting phone calls. It was really a great day. We'll continue the celebration in a few weeks when we go to see the new Star Wars "Clone Wars" movie with some buddies (the movie doesn't open til the 15th).

There are, of course, more pics to see on Smugmug. Both grandma's are having trouble viewing pics, so I'm trying a new way to link... leave us a comment to let us know if this works!

http://spando.smugmug.com/photos/346662548_qvtpL-Th.jpg

So far, O thinks 8 is pretty great! I'm still a little awed by the fact that he's eight years old!! And a third grader!! Frankly, it's a little much for mom at this point. This of course is confounded by the fact that summer flew by entirely too fast and school starts two weeks from today. We are so not ready for that...

Scientific Proof!

Here it is: scientific proof that my mom's hands really are as cold as ice. That's her big icy blue hand behind O's warmer green & yellow hand, as seen on the thermal imaging cam at the Science Center. We spent O's big 8th birthday there yesterday exploring the exhibits, watching an IMAX on the Mysteries of the Great Lakes, learning about Einstein and touring the Mather. Also had the requisite day-with-Baba ice cream treat, and since it was also a birthday treat, he got a bigger-than-his-stomach sundae at the Honey Hut. Yum! More birthday pics to come tomorrow...