My Dirty Little Secret

I think of my home office as a goat room. It eats anything and everything that nobody else wants. It likes to be fed piles of junk mail, postcards, letters, photographs, magazines, catalogs, school newsletters, pamphlets, receipts, love notes, Post-its® with telephone numbers I no longer recognize, greeting cards, pictures drawn by preschoolers, pictures drawn by Kindergarteners, pictures drawn by first graders, and all manner of odds and ends waiting to be put away. By this post, I am officially outted as having at least a borderline case of a compulsive clutter disorder or Disposaphobia.

Here is a picture of my office:

After considering the State of My Desk for some time and doing a little research on the subject, I’ve learned that there are many books and websites dedicated to helping those afflicted with clutter control issues. Don’t think for a minute that I mean to sound flippant or make light of such issues by joking about mine. I take the State of My Desk seriously. But serious issues require a sense of humor or they will drive us down. And by taking our issues public, not only do we get help for ourselves, but we help others in the process. Women have been sharing their secrets with each other for centuries, and in so doing we’ve learned that we are not alone, having more in common with each other than not.

Clutter control problems mostly affect women. And they seem to include symptoms ranging from feeling overwhelmed to an unhealthy manifestation of the desire for control. Hmmmm. Is that me? Must. Fight. Denial. Okay, maybe that’s me. Maybe? Okay, that’s me. That’s me, and what’s worse, I’m like my mother!!! She saved everything. So how did this desk happen to a nice girl like me? Well, the psychobabble-free version is that I keep myself busier than I ought to, and because I like to keep the rest of our living areas fairly tidy, I “hide” all of our junk in my office until I get the time to sort through the stuff that collects, discard what isn’t needed, and find proper places for what must be kept. The problem is, I keep putting that sorting part off, and off, and off, and so the piles just get bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Here’s how my thinking goes: “Hmmmm. I only have an hour before I have to pick up Laura. That isn’t enough time to sort through this mess.” Or I might think this: “Hmmmm. Laura’s teacher said she doesn’t need me to come into the classroom this afternoon. Now I have all afternoon to tidy my office, but now I also have time to make that Costco run I’ve been putting off . . . .”

So as I was standing in my office last week after I dropped Laura off at school, I took a hard look at the State of My Desk, and the game of internal verbal volleyball began. “Oh, just look at these piles of papers. Don’t look. Just go downstairs. No, I’m going to start dealing with this mess. This mess can’t stay here for even one more day. Then again, what’s another day? It took months to get it like this. No, I’m going to pick a pile and start organizing. But I don’t know where to start. Gosh, this is overwhelming. But I’ll just keep being overwhelmed if I don’t start someplace.” Then, just as I was starting to review in my head this list of things that I’d need to pick up at Costco, I glanced out of my office window, and what to my wondering eyes did appear? Well, see for yourself, because of course I took pictures for my blog.

The view from my office window:

Close up of the car window outside of my office:

There was nothing to do but consider this a divine sign. And with that in mind, I marched myself right downstairs to grab a plastic garbage bag, picked a pile of papers, and started sorting. That was two days ago and I’ve been sorting during every free moment since. Now I’m posting this story for several reasons:

1. The public shame of the BEFORE picture will cause me to keep working hard on my office, so that I can post the AFTER picture with all due haste. Kind of like what Kirstie Alley did when she became a spokesperson for Jenny Craig®.

2. I got to take a break from cleaning my office while I wrote this post.

3. The longer I take cleaning out my office, the longer I can put off cleaning out the garage.

4. I don’t want to become this woman.

Stay tuned for the AFTER picture . . .

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Although in San Diego the recent change in seasons was not marked by colorful, falling leaves and the start of brisk weather, the first day of autumn passed by nonetheless and took with it those lazy days of summer. The big girls are thriving back in college. And Laura is just where she ought to be, happy in first grade, engaged in activities, spending time with friends, and loving life. I am truly grateful that my children are all healthy and content. Still, I cannot help but look through the photos (click to enlarge) that I took over the summer and wax nostalgic for those days when schedules went mostly by the wayside in favor of carefree hours spent with family and friends.

There was time for sisters to hang out.

There was time for walking with grandparents.

There was time for hanging out with friends.

There was time for movies.

There was time for fish, butterflies, and ants.

There was time to launch rockets.

There was time to go to fun places like
Knott's Berry Farm, Disneyland, and the zoo.

There was time for glamour.

And there was time to get dirty.

There was time for eating Oreos® at the beach.

There was time for a vacation at Bruin Woods, a place to reunite with “old” friends, and where you can find nine people willing to pose as the Brady Bunch while you play the theme song on the piano in the camp talent show.

And while I know that Laura prefers school days (may she always love school so much), and while I will delight in all that the coming seasons of the year will surely bring, birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and hopefully a little travel, a very big part of me cannot help but look forward to next summer, when life will once again slow down just enough to welcome a little extra time to play with my loved ones.

In Deep

This is what the face of a swimmer who rocked her lane in a nine-foot deep pool this week looks like!

Two Pieces of Advice from Mom You Should Be Sure to Follow: Obey the Golden Rule and Always Wear Clean Underwear

I was so happy when Trish showed up on my doorstep on Sunday afternoon to see if Laura and I wanted to join her and Henry out for dinner at Islands, a favorite haunt of ours for multi-family dining. It had been a long and busy weekend, some of it fun, but lots of it laden with work and errands, which made us very tired. I was so happy not to have to cook! We were all starving, but despite that Trish and I managed to get along with each other just fine. And when Tom joined us later, even after sitting in the sun at a football game all day, he was pleasant company. Laura and Henry, however, began bickering in the back seat just as we were getting out of the car. I pulled Laura aside in the parking lot to tell her that I expected her to treat Henry kindly. Trish did the same with Henry. Henry accepted his lecture with quiet dignity. Laura began to protest loud enough to goad Henry, saying that it was Henry who wasn’t being nice. I told her that it sounded like she wasn’t being nice either. I said that it didn’t matter who started it, she could be the one to stop it. I said that two wrongs don’t make a right. I said the sort of things to Laura that before I had kids I vowed I would never say to my child, but now find myself saying regularly. Then just as Laura started to argue her case some more, and because I was pooped and had nothing else, I reached into my Mommy Arsenal for Redirecting Children’s Behavior and randomly grabbed Protestant Guilt.

Mommy: “Laura, you aren’t being very kind to Henry and I’m disappointed about that.”

Laura: “Well, he isn’t being nice to me.”

Mommy: “I’m not talking about Henry being nice. I’m talking about you being nice.”

Laura: “Why should I be nice if he’s not nice?”

Mommy (growing impatient while longing for the glass of Chardonnay that began beckoning to me, by my first and last name, from inside the restaurant): “Laura, you went to church today. Church is one of the places where you've learned how to treat other people kindly.”

Laura: “I know, but Henry’s not being nice and I’m not sitting by him.”

Mommy: “Laura! That’s not the way you’d want him to treat you. You were in church just this morning where you’ve learned that you are supposed to treat others the way you want to be treated, so since you were the one who went to church, what do you think you could say to Henry right now?”

Laura: “Na, na! I got to go to church and you didn’t?”

Maybe this golden rule stuff is going to take some more time. Plus, it turned out that Henry had good reason to be out of sorts, but at least I was wearing clean underwear.

TMI Warning

I haven’t been sleeping well for many reasons, including but not limited to breast pain from complications due to my recent (benign) breast surgery. Last week, the surgeon “drained” my breast, which entailed removing fluid with a needle inserted into my breast while I got to watch the whole thing on ultrasound. It pretty much sucked, no pun intended. I was probably too exhausted to give proper legal consent to having the procedure done, and my breast hurt even worse afterward, but at least I can take it on an airplane now. Later I found out that the procedure with the needle would be the good part of my day. In addition to the morning breast procedure, the day was fraught with one thing after another, incidents which reared their ugly heads mostly from a comedy of errors and misdoings on my part; however, by the time I was to pick up Laura from school despite being exhausted I was happily anticipating a nice afternoon in her company. At least the weather was lovely that day.

Laura’s swim team has a brand new, fabulously beautiful pool, which opened for the first time that same day. It has oodles of nine-foot deep lanes, all sparkling and inviting. Laura has gills, dives from the waterfall ledge into the eight-foot deep end of our pool regularly, dives from a diving board into the nine-foot deep end of the pool at Bruin Woods every summer, has swam on numerous occasions in the ocean with sea turtles in Maui, and so it didn’t occur to me to even tell her that the new pool would be deep. In fact, her coach had even told me the week before that she was worried about how some of the kids would handle it, but knew that with Laura it was a non-issue. So on day one of the new pool’s opening, when the coach had the kids walk to the edge of the pool and check out the depth, Laura lost it. In fact, Laura was the only kid who lost it. Imagine my surprise, and then my “utter delight” when the 200 or so swimmers, parents, and coaches around the pool stopped to gawk at Laura losing it. After failed negotiation attempts on the parts of her coaches (never try to negotiate with a child who can out-negotiate a lawyer who negotiates multi-million dollar deals involving Fortune 500 companies’ technologies), I made her get in. I knew that once she got used to it, she'd be fine and would have a feeling of accomplishment. But she was truly freaked out at first, so I was very proud that she got herself somewhat together, at least enough so that she got in and swam her laps. (I must acknowledge that when I first glanced at the new pool, even I made a mental note to watch Laura’s every stroke, because if she went down I knew it would be a long way to the bottom, and if that happened I planned to get to Laura before her triathlete coach could.) As Laura swam past me where I sat deck side, she’d turn her little wet head, let out a sob, take a breath, put her head back in, and continue swimming down her lane. During one lap she went by me doing freestyle, and when her little arm came out of the water she gave a “thumbs down” sign before putting her arm back in to complete the stroke. When she got out of the pool, she advised me that I should ask for a refund of her swim team dues. The kid’s got pluck. The locker rooms aren’t ready yet, and so getting changed out of her swimsuit happened in the car. It was cramped to say the least, and the air in the backseat area was hot and filled with complaints.


Our ritual on that day of the week usually includes dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and then ballet class, which Laura loves. Our weekly CPK break is my chance to have a good salad that I didn’t have to make and a nice, cold, Diet IBC Root Beer. However, that night, CPK included sitting three tables away from an approximately four-year-old child who was in charge of her parents. The entire restaurant kept turning to stare as the parents exchanged withered looks while the child, dressed for a fashion show, alternated between activities such as climbing on the chairs, balancing herself on the back of a booth by holding onto the window blinds, sitting on the table top, and running through the restaurant, all the while screaming things like, “I’m not eating this food!” and “Don’t you dare touch me!” Folks, I'm not exaggerating. It was all I could do for the forty-five long and painful minutes that we were there to not go over and spank that mother, or swipe the large glass of wine that she was drinking. Instead I couldn’t even finish my yummy salad because it was worse than listening to nails on a chalkboard, and I rushed Laura through her pasta so we could get the heck out of there. Then it was off to the YMCA, where instead of exercising like I should, I usually sit and read for an hour while Laura dances. This hour of reading is usually a glorious and self-indulgent time for me (so would be an hour of exercise, but still). For some reason that night every child in San Diego was at the YMCA, running around and screaming, while their parents talked loudly on cell phones and ignored them. I think I read two pages. I was on my last nerve.

Laura and I headed home and we were both exhausted and on the verge of tears, each for our own good reasons. On top of being on my last nerve, my breast was killing me because I didn’t take the pain medication that was prescribed because I had to drive my minor child around and I wanted her to live through the afternoon (me, not so much at that point). I stopped at the mailbox for the three days’ worth of junk mail, two bills, and one party invitation that was crammed inside. Then I drove up to our house and noticed that Tom’s car was in the driveway and that all of our neighbors’ trash cans were out except for ours. Laura carried in her backpack and the “organic” baked Cheetos® that I let her get from the vending maching at the Y, while I lugged in the mail, her lunchbox, her swim bag, her wet towel and suit, and her dance bag. I was exhausted. I was in pain. I wasn’t thinking clearly and I knew it, but still I felt completely overwhelmed as I inventoried all that I had to do before I could relax that evening: Wash Agent Orange from Laura’s hands caused by Cheetos®, sort mail, clean out lunchbox, empty water bottles, unload swim bag, put wet items in laundry room, unload dance bag, bathe kid, get kid ready for bed, empty inside trash cans and recycle bin, get trash cans and recycling to curb, etc., etc., etc. I sat down on the bottom stair and started to cry. Tom said something to the effect of, “Why are you crying in front of Laura?” This caused me to have a reaction that resembled Linda Blair’s head spinning around 360° when Captain Howdy took over Regan’s body. Later, I asked Tom why he hadn’t taken out the trash in a sweet, loving, and Christian manner. (This is my blog, I’ll be in charge of the spin, thank you very much, Amen.) Tom said that he hadn’t realized it was trash day, he would have taken it out, and why hadn’t I just asked him. Whatever. After over fourteen years together, doesn’t he know by now that he’s supposed to read my mind? Besides, I have previously mentioned my knack for blurring the lines between motherhood and martyrdom, and if I’d asked him to take out the trash rather than doing it myself, I might have lost touch with my inner martyr and then what good would I be to my loved ones?

I eventually got myself together and went about my tasks. Tom bathed the kid and washed her hair, and when I walked into the bathroom, he glanced at me, probably wishing he’d worn chain maille into the tub, but I had calmed down by that point. I jumped into the shower to wash off the day and was contemplating the wording of the speech in which I planned to come off sounding like I’d apologized, but which in reality would be me cunningly offering up excuses for the aforementioned head spin. I’ve had years of therapy; I know how to work this. ;) Then Laura started negotiating whether she could go to bed with wet hair. No, she could not, Tom told her. I leaned out of the shower and said that her hair would have to be blow dried. She reminded us of the time during the summer that we let her sleep with wet hair and a towel on her pillow. We told her that wasn’t going to happen, it was a school night, and would she please not act like that little girl at CPK. As I got out of the shower, Laura’s negotiation tactics were beginning to look like they might blossom into a 360° head spin, and one head spin per family per night is our limit. I looked Tom right in the eye.

Cheri: “You need to start believing in God.”

Tom: “Why?”

Cheri: “So you have someone to pray to.”

Tom: “Why?”

Cheri: “So you can pray that I stop getting my periods before Laura starts getting hers.”

And then we shared a laugh . . .
We dried the kid's hair and got her into bed . . .
We opened a bottle of wine . . .
We gazed meaningfully into each other’s eyes . . .
We put our arms around each other . . .
And then we did that act that married people do after the kid is asleep . . .
We watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, Season Two on DVD.

Another One Bites The Dust

Laura's Betta fish, Napoleon (formerly known as Laura, who was formerly known as Savannah, who was formerly known as Sparklie), passed away peacefully in his sleep.

Napoleon has been interred in the family plot next to Pedro. Natalie or Savannah (formerly known as Natalie, who was formerly known as Sparkle) was posthumously renamed Pedro.

Napoleon is survived by his widow, Deb. Napoleon died intestate with no offspring, despite at one point having made a lovely bubble nest. Under California law, title to the fish tank passed automatically to Napoleon’s widow, as her sole and separate property. Deb’s possessory interest in Napoleon’s personal property, which includes, inter alia, various plastic plants, a Timmy bubblehead, and a SpongeBob pineapple house, transferred into an ownership interest upon Napoleon’s death by operation of law.

Laura, who is getting the hang of presiding over graveside services, had these words to say: “Napoleon was a good fish. I hope he stays in his grave.” We assured Laura that corpses usually do (unless it's the protagonist in a Wes Craven movie, of course).

Rest in Peace Napoleon.

The Pied Piper of the Pool Has Brothers

I have put my finger on why NFL blows for women. The cute players (apart from the ones with giant necks and bellies) are all concealed and covered up by helmets, mouth guards, face masks, and pads, pads, pads. This is a good thing when it comes to most linebackers and tackles, but not so much when it comes to many quarterbacks and wide receivers. Where the heck is the fun for us if you can’t see the tight end’s tight end? With tennis, soccer, and basketball, you get to see muscles under shirts, manes of hair flying, and cute butts in shorts. NFL merely provides play after play culminating in masses of full-body padding in pileups.

One of the toughest things about the NFL season for me isn’t that I don’t get player eye candy, and it isn’t that Tom is glued to the television for hours on end. It’s that our darned phone rings over and over again all day long as the brothers three call each other to discuss each play. Do you read me? Each play. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ahhhh! And nobody says hello. Back in the day, I would answer the phone and get, “Did you see that play?” As my eyes rolled back into my occipital lobe I’d say, “Here’s Tom.” Now I don’t even bother to answer the phone during a game. And typically I couldn’t answer it even if I wanted to because Tom does not watch football with the remote control in his hand. Tom watches football with the telephone in his hand. Heaven forbid if a call comes in during game time and it’s for me, Tom will keep looking at the phone wistfully while I talk (trying to concentrate on my call with the call-waiting beep going off in my ear every two seconds), or he’ll pick up his cell phone.

Our phone wasn’t ringing off the hook last Sunday, the day of the first game of the regular NFL season. It wasn’t ringing because the brothers three were at our house, live and in person, to watch football. But I know how to make lemonade out of lemons! Along with brother Jonathan came his missus and baby. Laura was thrilled to play big cousin, and I got a baby fix holding my darling little niece, Emerson. And there was plenty of time for a nice catch-up visit with my sweet sister-in-law. I even managed to chat up the brothers-in-law during commercial breaks.


Between games the brothers went for a swim. In previous posts about the Pied Piper of the Pool, I was photojournalist to some of Tom’s antics as he would coax others to perform feats previously not attempted by mere mortals in a swimming pool. With Tom’s brothers there was no coaxing required. They attempted various feats of “courage” that anyone with common sense and a family to live for would avoid at all costs. After trying various dives and flips, front and back, from the waterfall, Jonathan had red welts on his back. But it was Andy who caused me leave the pool deck to go review the liability provisions of our homeowner’s policy, returning with my camera to document what was making Tom and Jonathan belly laugh and repeat over and over, “Try it again, Andy, try it again! Come on, just one more time!” Andy was going down our waterslide standing up. I asked Andy if I could post a picture of it on my blog. His first reply was, “No, you cannot.” I said, “Darn!” And to that he replied, “You know what? Go ahead and post a photo of me. Nobody reads your blog.” And so, with his full knowledge and consent, here is a photo of Andy for nobody to see:

Seasonal Football Widow Syndrome

NFL.com's Pat Kirwan wrote this about tonight’s first Monday Night Football broadcast for the 2006 NFL season:

What a special treat. We get to see two Monday Night Football games with the Vikings traveling to Washington followed by the Chargers going to the “Black Hole” for a divisional game against the Raiders.

In a somewhat contradictory but still cheerful response, BlogThisMom.Blogspot.com's Cheri wrote the following about tonight’s first Monday Night Football broadcast for the 2006 NFL season:

Tom and I fell in love during the spring of our first year in law school. You know, springtime love, the kind of love that ripens when flowers are blooming and birds are singing. Tom was handsome, smart, sweet and funny. I was thin. We both had bright futures ahead of us in the legal profession. He had nice biceps. I wore size four jeans. During our first semester in law school we were friends. Then we became good friends. Later in the school year we started seeing each other romantically. I knew that I had found a good one in Tom, and Tom knew that he found someone who thought so. But still, luckily for us we both progressed along Eros Boulevard at relatively the same rate. There were no unrequited feelings or unanswered passions. By the end of the summer that year, we were both quite smitten with each other. But something also happens at the end of summer each and every year, a seemingly innocuous little event called the beginning of the NFL season. No matter what Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, or Harville Hendrix might have to say, I had no way to know in advance of falling in love with Tom what happens to him during football season. I know, I know, love is blind and all that. Bologna! What emerged from my newly beloved came as a surprise to me because it was a surprise, darn it. So no matter how unhealthy it may sound, and despite the denial in which I must fester to do so, I will always maintain that I could not have seen it coming until I had the opportunity to watch Tom watch a Rams game, and by then it was too late for me. I was already in love. And that is how it came to pass that I became Tom’s football widow before I became his bride.

Fourteen Years Later
A Haiku by Cheri

Monday Night Football
Our love endures overtime
Pass the Doritos®

Beggars Can Be Choosers

This morning Laura was discussing what she would be for Halloween. Here’s how this works: The back-to-school shopping season has just ended, the Christmas displays are going up in stores, and so that means it is time to think about Halloween. Laura is currently torn between dressing up as Napoleon Dynamite or his girlfriend, Deb.


Laura: “If I’m Deb I could wear my pink dress. I’ll have to watch the movie again to see about the socks and shoes. But don’t worry, I won’t need new shoes, I’ll just wear whatever shoes I have that are the closest to Deb’s.”

Mom: “Good idea.”

Laura: “And if I’m Deb, I won’t need a wig. Deb and I have the same hair.”

Mom: “Good point. But if you decide to be Napoleon, you already have your VOTE FOR PEDRO shirt, and we might be able to find you a wig and glasses. I saw some online, and I’m guessing that Party City might have some when they start selling costumes.”

Laura: “Will you go check at Party City while I’m in school?”

Mom: “I will if you want me to, but I thought you like going to Party City.”

Laura: “I like Party City, but if you go without me then I won’t be begging for things.”

Mom: “Oh, I see.”

Laura: “That’s why I don’t like going to Home Depot. There’s nothing to beg for there.”

School Days, School Days

It was the first day of school today and the mamarazzi was out in full force.


This is what a first grader looks like:





This is what the mommy of a first grader looks like after drop off:

A Horse of a Different Color

If one were to say that Tom is competitive it would be a vast understatement. Moreover, Tom has a sound ego to go with his gung ho nature such that if he were to lose at anything, there would be an explanation in his mind to account for it. I do not share such traits with Tom, so much so that when we were in law school, we’d both walk out of the same exam with infinitely different takes on how we each did. Tom would pronounce that he was sure that he scored somewhere in the high 90s (not an easy grade to get on a law school exam). I’d be sure I’d failed. And somehow or other we’d both end up doing very well, with one of us typically scoring within a point or two of the other. When all was said and done, on the day our final law school grades were announced, one of us had an overall GPA that was slightly above the other. I won’t tell you whose was the highest, but Tom could account for it by explaining that my GPA was boosted by the semester’s worth of “easy 90s” grades I earned as one of a handful of students selected for the Hobbs Trial Advocacy Program and at my (hard-earned and widely sought-after) Los Angeles District Attorney certified law clerk position. Apparently competitive natures run in Tom's family.

Tom’s competitive streak also plays out around the house and during family activities. Hardly a game of Monopoly has ever been played in our house that we haven’t had to ring up Antonin Scalia for an interpretation of the rules. Don’t bother trying to float the notion with Tom that the game is supposed to be played – with our children – for fun. His response: “But it isn’t fun if you aren’t playing by the rules.” And so it was last year we were handed, by Tom, a tagline by which we could forevermore label his competitiveness in any situation, and, as it turned out, ours too. It happened on a family outing at Legoland, at which there is an attraction called the Fun Town Fire Academy. This “ride” features hand-pump-powered LEGO® fire trucks operated by the riders who must race the other trucks up and back across a straightaway, in the middle of which the riders jump out to pump water to put out a “burning” building. It was in line for this ride that Tom began to strategize with Adam and to coach Kristen as to just how they would approach winning the race. Tom and Adam were to go hard and fast on opposite sides of the two-person pump. Kristen was to note which way the doors opened by observing the ride then in progress, and when their truck arrived at the burning building, she was to deftly open the doors providing an advantage to Tom and Adam so that they could exit to the water pump faster than their competitors. Kristen was also to operate the direction lever, leaving Tom and Adam to focus solely on pumping hard and fast. Laura was to “drive” by operating the faux steering wheel; this would keep her occupied and out of the way. I was to stay behind and photograph the event to post in my future blog.

When it was their turn, everyone boarded the truck. The bell rang and they were off. Tom et al. came in first at the burning building. They exited the vehicle. The "fire" was doused. They re-boarded the truck and assumed their previously assigned positions. Tom and Adam pumped furiously back to the finish line, and as they approached Tom could be heard shouting victoriously, "Domination!" Tom et al. got to the finish line first by a comfortable margin. It was then and there, amidst the sad eyes of the small children and the weary eyes of their parents on the losing trucks, that Tom threw his arms up in a victory pose and again shouted loud enough for everyone from Oceanside to La Jolla to hear, “Domination!” Then, savoring his win for but a moment, Tom looked out across the playing field and threw up his arms a second time in celebration of his victory. Kristen was so irritated with Tom for his behavior in front of all the little children who'd lost, and for pushing past her when she didn’t open the doors fast enough at the burning building, that she barely spoke to him the rest of the day. I caught the race on video; turn up the speaker volume and you'll hear "Domination!" for yourself:



Fast forward to our annual end-of-summer trip to Disneyland which took place last Friday. For the last two years we have opened and closed the park, which was no small feat this year as Disneyland was open on Friday from 9 A.M. until midnight. It being a work day, Tom was unable to join us as he had a lot of catch-up work to do having spent the week before on our family vacation to Bruin Woods (more on this in an upcoming post). There have been some changes at Disneyland since the year before, such as the refurbished Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, complete with Captain Jack Sparrow. (Be still my heart! Yeah, I know that flash photography is not allowed and that it was just an Animatron, but still.)


And Mickey ears got a new look too. (Note the earring in the left ear.)


During our 2005 end-of-summer visit we noticed that some of the attractions had added features such as a golden tea cup, a golden Autopia car, a golden Storybook Land boat, and so forth, in honor of Disneyland’s 50th Anniversary celebration. Although 2006 marks year fifty-one, the golden attraction features were still in place because Disneyland's 50th Anniversary celebration is scheduled to last eighteen months. °o° Laura noticed that there was a golden Dumbo while she waited in line, and when the Disneyland Cast Member let her and Adam through the gate, she was the first child to it. Tom was so proud when he heard about it.


At King Arthur’s Carousel in Fantasyland, Laura pointed out that there was a golden horse, and said that she hoped when it was her turn she’d get to it first. Yet it was Kristen who sounded the alert and rallied the troops. She directed, “Adam, when the gates open, you run to the gold horse and save it for Laura.” As the ride before ours came to an end, Kristen and Adam watched as the carousel slowed to see where the golden horse stopped. They positioned themselves and Laura in front of the gate, and prepared to run in the appropriate direction. I was ready with my camera. Then the Disneyland Cast Member opened the gate immediately next to the gate at which we stood, but left ours closed as she returned to her post. Faster than I’ve ever seen her move in her almost twenty-two years, Kristen pushed past Adam, Laura, and the rest of the crowd. Before I could blink, she was through the open gate. She raced to the golden horse and got to it first. Kristen threw her arm across the golden saddle to reserve it for Laura, turned back to us, and with a twinkle in her eye shouted, “Domination!”