Write My Life

In lieu of drama camp this summer, the girls chose horse camp. For two weeks they went to camp Monday, Wednesday and Friday for appox. 2 1/2 hours.

Jaclyn joined 4 other friends from school and church in her group. Jennifer attended the same camp at the same time but in a different group.

The instructors at Webb Ranch taught them to brush their horse, helped them tack the horse, then gave them lessons on riding the horse. Switching between western, english and bareback riding styles, the girl learned to stop, turn, ride the rail, maneuver around obstacles, 2-point, jog, and trot. On the final day of classes, they did a trail ride around the ranch grounds.

Mike and I really had to discuss whether Jennifer could take horse riding lessons. Jackie had not started until she was 10 years old. Jennifer wasn’t 10 yet and we felt she might do better to wait a little longer. But it was Jackie who convinced us to let Jennifer take lessons also. Jackie said she wouldn’t feel upset or that it was unfair that her sister began earlier than her. She pointed out all the good things about it. When we told Jennifer she could go, she was all smiles and full gratitude.

Lately, I’ve seen little changes in Jaclyn. Many of them are changes in what she wants to do with herself.

She still reads endlessly, devouring books every morning when she wakes in the morning and then again near bedtime. No change there. She still spends lots of time on the computer, playing games or composing stories. No change there.
One day, though, while sitting and waiting through Jennifer’s softball game I took a photographs of her. Afterwards I noticed two interests that had cropped up lately. They were both in the photograph

Cards. With a deck of cards in hand, Jaclyn will spend moments of time when she doesn’t have a book or computer access playing card games. She plays solataire, but she also enjoys playing simple gameswith other people.

“Jennifer needs something to hit,” I said to Mike. So when I saw a banner for a summer softball league, we chose to sign up Jennifer.The first three weeks were instructional clinics. This was good for Jennifer who had never played softball in her life. That was my error. Despite the fact that I grew up loving baseball, Jennifer did not know the basic rules and fundamentals of baseball or softball. Unfortunately we missed half the clinics due to our vacation.

After the clinics, they played non-competive short games. For each inning every player batted, fieldied and ran the bases. Jennifer enjoyed it a lot. Jennifer didn’t necessarily want a high profile fielding position, but she always made smart decisions. As a non-competitive game, she played several positions. I saw her doing well at shortstop, pitcher’s helper and 2nd base. The pitcher’s helper field for the adult who pitches. In her last game she grabbed a ball hit in the air toward her. It was such a spectacular play that everyone was raving about it.

She also hit well. Occassionally, she would become frustrated when she wasn’t hitting it immediately. One day she was having a lot of problems hitting the ball despite a great looking swing. Mike leaned over to me, “She can do it. I know she can. I’ve seen her do this.” Then he coach yelled to the pitcher, “Throw it faster.” “Faster?” he asked. “Yes!” On the next pitch, Jennifer hit it for an infield single. Go Jennifer Go!

An unexpected outcome of Jennifer’s softball is that several families from church started playing pick-up games of softball with us, usually on friday nights. We even had a decent game at our church picnic.

Our plum tree ran wild this year. Shortly after we returned from our vacation, the plums became ripe. For three weeks, we had more plums than we could possibly ever eat. We gave bags and bags away to friends and Mike’s co-workers. I made plum cake, plum cobbler and plum jam. With such sweet plums, the became very sweet when baked.

Jaclyn’s chores includes picking up plums that fall on the ground. One day she reported picking up over 250 plums. On the final day of picking, Mike shook the tree to release all the plums way too high to ever pick. Over 500 plums were picked off the ground that day.

With more time together and more hours for creative play, Jackie and Jenny found themselves together more and more. Sometimes arguments and misunderstandings emerged. Tension and voices would rise at those time, putting me in the frustrating role of facilitator. Other times, though, they would work together and create some really creative games.

One day they pretended to be rock stars. Jennifer even wore star glasses and posed for a photo shoot.

Another day they fabricated a complicated story about a rich Grecian girl and her slave girl.

We attended our final Harry Potter launch party at Kepler’s bookstore in Menlo Park. They dressed in black school robes and brought wands and a bag of wizarding supplies. Jaclyn hung around with her friend Nia and Jennifer and I floated around the festivities inside and outside the store.

We joined the extra long line at 11:45 p.m. and were handed our books at 12:25 a.m.

Why change something good? For the 4th of July we did more of the same - picnic on the grass at Pete’s Harbor at the port of Redwood City, play games, relax and watch spectacular fireworks at approx. 9:30 p.m. It works for us.

Our return home plan was to visit one of my scrapbook friends who lived outside of Minneapolis on Saturday, spend the night in a hotel along the way, then return to Mike’s parents house Sunday. We had a wonderful visit, including a great meal and great hospitality, with my friend, Sue. It was a delight to see Sue again and meet her family and dogs!

We hit the road, driving down along the Mississippi River and crossing it into La Crosse, Wisconsin. But we hit a snag here. There were no hotels with rooms available. In a town of 50,000 there wasn’t a room to be found. We continued down the road, finding nothing…not even in a few little, off-beaten hotels we found. We did not find a hotel until we pulled into Madison, WI at midnight.

Another snag we discovered at dinner was that I left my purse at Sue’s house. Duh! Mike, master planner for all emergencies, had my passport so we were safe with me being able to board the airplane home. Sue quickly sent my purse back to California were I picked it up a few days later.

Back in the Chicago area we returned to the heat and humidity. We spent Sunday relaxing with Mike’s cousin and Monday just hanging around with Mike’s parents. On Monday, we decided to visit a park with a frisbee golf coarse before the heat hit hard. Mike showed us his killer frisbee throws. We were all surprised by the length between the tees and the location of some of the holes - some over creeks or into the woods.

Despite our plans we didn’t totally beat the heat and humidity. By 10:30 a.m. it was beginning to drain us. Now I remember why I don’t live in a humid place anymore…

The acclaimed headwaters of the Mississippi start at Lake Itasca so we took a short drive north with my brother’s family to visit Itasca State Park.

We discovered, though, a great deal of controversy on the subject of the true headwater or starting point of the Mississippi River. Wikipedia’s article on Lake Itasca tells the story: Henry Schoolcraft identified Lake Itasca as the river’s source in 1832. He had been part of a previous expedition in 1820 led by General Lewis Cass that had named nearby Cass Lake (which is downstream from Itasca) as the source of the river…The western arm of the lake is fed by two small streams on its south end. Nicolett Creek, which is considered too small to be considered as the headwaters, starts in a nearby spring. Another small stream leads into Itasca from Elk Lake, which in turn is fed by two other streams. In1887 Williard Glazier promoted a campaign to consider Elk Lake, which he called Glazier Lake, as the true source of the Mississippi. These streams, however, are generally considered too small to be categorized as the headwaters of the river. The decision was made by Jacob V. Brower, a land surveyor and president of the Minnesota Historical Society, who after spending five months exploring the lakes ruled that the lakes and streams further south of Lake Itasca were not the true source of the Mississippi.

This led us all to wonder what really did constitute the beginnings of a river. Was it the first trickle of water? Was it the earliest lake from which is originates? Or something else? And we also wondered when rivers join, how it is decided which river it is at that point.

Regardless, the headwaters are now officially located at Lake Itasca at a very obvious point. It is obvious because in the 1930’s the Civilian Conservation Corps actually moved the channel of the Mississippi as it emerged from the lake to make a more pleasant experience for visitors. They drained the swamp, dug the new channel and installed a man-made rock barrier to create rapids from the lake to the channel. Now tourists who visit the site wade across the rock barrier.

We’re always on the lookout for new and interesting games. At our resort we found two unique games. The two games, set up in the playground area, involved balls and competition with one other opponent.

In carpetball, two players stand at opposite ends of a long, narrow carpeted table. They set up pool balls on their end of the table. The object is to knock the opponents balls with the cue ball. Each player takes turns rolling the cue ball. We each developed some strategies but none of us became unbeatable at carpetball.

In knuckleball, two players stand next to each other with a paddle. Balls, whiffle or tennis, are played in the playing area and hit with the paddles. The goal is to get the ball on your opponents side and have it roll off. When the ball rolls off, the person on the other side is declared the winner. The difficulty of this games can be changed depending on how many balls or what time of balls are in play.

We had fun experimenting and taking turns playing these games with one another.