Parents Baffled but Grateful

MENLO PARK, CA — September 10, 2008 — In a shocking turn of events today, Emma Heath received her school picture and found that it did not make her look like a leering, mildly retarded troll.

“I couldn’t believe it,” the seventh grader reported. “I didn’t look that bad!”

Heath suffers from a genetic disorder that causes perfectly attractive people to make ghoulish facial contortions in the presence of a camera. As a result, Heath’s school photos generally inspire cringing and stammering in others.

“She does the makeup picture every year, but it’s never any better than the original,” lamented Heath’s father, who suffers from the same condition and in fact admits passing it on to his innocent child.

Yet sources say the true victim of the disease is Heath’s stepmother, who cannot get a decent family picture to save her life. “With these freaks, it would take a miracle,” she moaned, but feels heartened by Heath’s recent photographic success. “Here, at last, we have some progress. It’s not the best picture I’ve ever seen, but at least she doesn’t look like a leering, mildly retarded troll.”

Heath’s parents report that the picture in question will likely remain unavailable to the public, as school photographers apparently have not embraced the digital age.

“Us, scan this in?” scoffed Heath’s father. “It’s an improvement, but it’s not that good.”

I know, I know, it’s been a long time since I posted an update. But here’s pretty much what we do in the JEL family:

1) work
2) attend youth sports

So you can consider yourself up to date.

We actually had a really nice vacation last month in Tahoe, renting a great little house near King’s Beach for a week. We brought a friend of Emma’s and set about doing the things one does in Tahoe: swimming, canoeing, eating ice cream for breakfast, even splurging on a parasail trip. The weather was perfect and the movies were classic: Ferris Bueller, Breakfast Club, and So I Married an Axe Murderer (”we’ve got a piper down!”). ‘Twas most lovely all around.

Now Emma’s back to school and John isn’t, a fact wielded most cruelly by John (and resented by me since I NEVER have summer vacation). However, that fact is rapidly outgrowing its truthiness, for John will go back to teaching in a couple of weeks, leaving me and the Terrible Puppy to party all day and then pretend we have been working and/or licking ourselves as soon as John and Emma get home.

When we have time in the evenings we are taking turns reading Treasure Island aloud. I am excited about this because I now have some bitchin’ lingo to use when the annual Talk Like a Pirate Day rolls around again.

The only real news is that Emma — having outgrown Little League earlier this summer — tried out for two competitive softball teams and made both. This fall she will be the starting shortstop for the California SPIN team! Glamorous as this may sound, her participation will require her parents to spend weekends in less choice locales than our own balmy Peninsula. You know…Hayward, Salinas, Stockton. As the manager of the team said, “That’s just the reality when your kids play sports.”

And so it is. I actually have rather fond memories of an AM/PM in Stockton where I once made myself a sundae wearing cat pajamas and then managed to knock over an entire container of plastic spoons. I then cackled out the door, leaving my poor mortified mother to deal with the fallout. Ah, memories.

Anyway, we’ll see how this traveling softball thing goes. All I can say is: the other parents had better not suck.

“If you were worth anything, I would sell you on eBay.”
- Emma to John

What a sweet and gracious child we have.

Well, my friends Dan and Lupine had a girl after all - Bina Clementine Swanson Blaker.

BUT! My cousin Jason and wife Rava are having their second son very soon, so the boy count still remains oddly high this year.

At Emma’s baseball game the other night, one of the moms was saying that Menlo Park’s crop of 11-year-olds is very girl-heavy; apparently her son’s class is 2/3 girls, and even Little League enrollments are down amongst that age group. Weird how these things happen.

Yes, it is Little League season, so we are all dutifully freezing our asses off three times a week. I have taken to bundling up in the Green Maggot (my down sleeping bag) to survive the frigid climes. Even worse, the head coach is obsessed and sadistic, choosing to prolong our agony whenever possible (like playing the final inning when it’s two minutes to seven and we are four thousand runs ahead). We bleacher-huddled folk have formed the Cold Parents’ Association to lobby for more humane treatment, but I am not optimistic. Our cries fall on deaf ears.

Well, we have embarked upon a rite of passage whose conclusion will make us true Menlo Park residents once and for all:

The KITCHEN REMODEL.

Menlo Parkians are all about their kitchen remodels. Everyone’s doing them. Most importantly, everyone’s complaining about them. See, it’s not cool to brag about how rich you are, even here. So what you do instead is complain about how looong it’s taking, all the mistaaakes that have been made, how much extra mooooney it’s costing, and then everyone knows you are soooo rich and special you are getting a mind-blowing kitchen remodel.

But since there’s no chance that we could be mistaken for either rich or special, I am going to skip the whole farce.

Actually, having no kitchen is rather enjoyable. You don’t have to cook anything. You don’t have to do any dishes. And you get visited by bonny construction workers who astound you with their encyclopedic knowledge of power tools.

Now you might be wondering what was wrong with our old kitchen. Well, besides the fact that it seemed to be constructed purely out of cardboard and filth, nothing at all.

I’ll be sure to post the before-and-after pictures once this whole thing is finished and I return to my previous life of culinary slavery. Then again, at that point I’ll be a real Menlo Parkian, so I may not even be talking to you anymore. Unless, of course, I’m complaining.

I’ve just added albums from the past three Christmases, Erin’s 30th birthday party, and my recent trip to Brookings, Oregon with the Superfriends.

Baby boys are everywhere. I am starting to check dark corners and cabinets with a flashlight in case there are any lurking in my house.

My friend Julie had Finn Christopher Sutton in January, and just a few weeks later Tim and Melinda had Colin Searc O’Connor. Still coming down the proverbial pike—due in April—are my friend Stephanie’s son, Jack Lynch, and the second child of my friends Dan and Lupine. Given the trend, they’ll have a boy too. (Well, they may know what they are having—but busy with the precocious Dot, they have been somewhat incommunicado.)

Meanwhile, my daughter has become enormous. I suggested to John last night that we try spritzing her with that fixing spray artists use to avoid smudging their drawings. Needless to say, it was rather jarring to hold tiny little Colin O’Connor when I am used to a five-foot-six eleven-year-old. But he is very cute, and I would venture to guess he looks much better in a onesie. No offense, Emsk.

Better late than never. View the slideshow and photo album. Either way you will get to see me looking like the devil.

I wrote an article for a web site called BeneathTheCover.com, which covers all aspects of the book industry. Check it out.

Help! I am in the midst of one of John’s reorganizing frenzies! As soon as I woke up this morning I recognized the maniacal glint in his eye, and knew I was doomed. There is no avoiding it: one must help or hide.

I helped. But now I’m hiding, typing this message in a secret corner while he hums and taps and cleans things in the office.

He is insane. But then again, he’s in an awfully good mood. We’ve made excellent progress with our plan to sort through our books and reorganize the office. Still, I am ready to stop now. John, however, doesn’t stop. Not when he’s insane.

Perhaps I should start a foundation? Calming the Beast Within (CBW), We’ve Done Enough for Today (WDET), or perhaps Let It Rest Already (LIRA)?

You may send me your donations. In the meantime, you’ll know where to find me.