Christmas 2008

THE M CHRONICLES
2008 HOLIDAY EDITION

9 February
Dear Diary,
Now that N is four years old, he wants to know everything about everything. He and C had a perfectly serious discussion about the symbiotic relationship between plants and people yesterday. N took this to mean that he had to breathe heavily on the rhododendron in our front yard.

My only concern is if we’re having these discussions at 4, what will happen when he’s 8 or 17? Or for that matter, 5?

Thank God for Google.

22 April
Dear Diary,
Seven seconds. Just a drop in the time bucket, isn’t it? According to C, it’s enough to make you toss your Clif Shots when you miss breaking the three hour mark in the Boston Marathon by those seven measly seconds. In his defense, there was a 10 mph east wind blowing that day. I’m sure if you correct for wind, he met his goal. Let’s see - a 6:52 minute/mile pace into a 10 mph wind…er, um.

How did I ever get through differential equations?

13 May
Dear Diary,
Care to guess what N’s favorite TV show is? Food Network’s Good Eats. Alton Brown is the king of his realm. Hearing, “But Alton Brown said…” is not much better than hearing, “But Dad said…”; however, since I’m the executive family chef, I have the last word.

Fortunately, these are skills that will serve him well later in life. He may not always put the toilet seat down but he does know to salt the pasta water.

7 July
Dear Diary,
C asked me how my day was today. So I spewed. It was a long day of firefighting and dealing with people who needed excessive hand-holding. I finished the litany by saying, “Sometimes, I’m just not scary enough.”

N overhears this outpouring and in all seriousness, asks me if I saw Sulley on the Scare Floor today. My son thinks I work at Monsters Inc.

23 August
Dear Diary,
C just spent the last 25 hours in a van full of sweaty men running Hood to Coast, the “Mother of all Relays”. You’d think in the presence of all that testosterone, the conversation would degenerate to the attributes of the many spandex-clad chickies each managed to collect as road kill. Instead, the self-described “Gentleman’s Van” debated the nutritional merits of durian and balut.

Does this mean we’re getting old?

25 September
Dear Diary,
I had a pretty good triathlon season. I jumped off a perfectly good boat and proved once and for all that it is possible to Escape from Alcatraz. I even went to Nationals, albeit as a zebra in a field of cheetahs trying my hardest not to get eaten.

But Type A obsessive personality that I am, I can’t help but raise the bar. I’m no longer content with getting faster. Now I need to go longer. There’s hardly enough time to get wet, cold, dizzy, nauseous, chafed, and exhausted in the shorter races.

What fun is there in that?

16 October
Dear Diary,
I went to Parent-Teacher conferences today. N is doing well this year and Teacher P called him a creative and well-rounded engineering type. No surprises there, really.

Then she showed me his self portrait. He thinks he’s a train with flat wheels. I’m not sure whether to be happy he can make such well-formed shapes or concerned that he thinks he lives in the Sodor engine shed with Thomas the Tank Engine.

1 December
Dear Diary,
December already? I guess I need to get cracking on our Holiday Letter…

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