Opportunity - use it or lose it

I'm taking advantage of North Carolina's victory to post one of my favorite pictures of all time.

Now let's Play Ball.

Good parenting

I frequently tell my kids, "Keep it up! And see where that gets you."

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."-- Calvin Coolidge

Carb Free: This Rice is an Alright Vice

Now that Jim’s in the Hall and we had a Joslin appointment yesterday, this seems like a perfect time to reprise blogging, which is apparently tracking the same as my workout habit – feast, then famine.

While Remy and Don rule the booth, Rice is the greatest sports commentator behind the desk. This guy is a bonafide star. His analysis is sometimes surprising, sometimes funny and the fashion is second to none. Oh, and apparently he was quite a moonshot hittin’, green monster mastering left fielder, too. (I love those crazy left field hitting machines.) Having spent his entire career with the Sox and continuing with the team in various roles since retirement, I predict we’ll see #14 hanging soon in Fenway. Congrats to the baseball writers for finally getting this one right.

And though Reagan’s attention span is more suited to Nick sitcoms than 9 innings of baseball these days, she definitely has a memory suited to players and stats, past and present. She was about 8 when she watched Fever Pitch and piped up, “Hey, there’s Jim Rice!” Proud moments in parenting…

Don't Drink and Bake

I worry that I worry too much. Seriously - even before the Type 1 dx, I drove my self right up to the sanity city limits with scenarios ranging from the terrifying to the ridonculous. Of course now I just have new material to work with.

Here's my issue. When my husband is out of town for work, the frenzy of one adult overseeing two kids and all that entails leaves me longing for a little evening cocktail. But what if I suddenly need to go somewhere? Pharmacy, ER - or what if she calls me to help with a low and I'm sleeping just a wee bit too soundly to hear on the first summons?

Since one 5 oz. nip is my usual limit - it's not like we're knocking back a bottle of Jack on a good night - I sense that this behavior might go past responsible to kinda silly.

Boys DO Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses

If Sarah Palin has contributed in any measurable way to our society, it has been to prove that chicks in glasses are hot. Well, what a time to be a kid, eh?

My daughter finally scored the reading glasses she has wanted so badly. The trip to the eye doctor was met with the same manic enthusiasm as a school holiday. She spent a crazy amount of time selecting the the perfect pair of kid-size frames with Easy Twist technology. And where else but the optometrist can a tween try on Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, and Dior?

My story was the opposite - a long-term disaster. Boy-crazy at an early age, I was also precociously vain. (Looking back, maybe my parents were aware of this and bribed the doctor, because what a scary combination.) In any case, both those predispositions ran head-on into Third Grade Glasses and drama the likes of which I have only witnessed, um.....with my daughter.

No way on the highway was Loren - the short, dark & handsome boy who sat in front of me going to grow up and marry a girl with glasses! Not only could I suddenly see well, I could see into the future. He would fulfill his singular dream of becoming a long-haul truck driver and now some other girl - one who wasn't cursed with bad eyes -would win his roaming heart and wave him off each week as he took to the road. I cried myself to sleep the day we picked up those humongous brown spectacles. It was a life sentence that not even a "celebration" dinner at Red Lobster could fix.

Fast forward to the present on a late evening when I've succumbed to the irritation and traded my scratchy contacts for super-chic BCBG frames and we have an episode of late night emotional upheaval, which seems to materialize when she has reached the titration point with her diabetes. I try to remember how the perceived curse of my bad eyesight made me feel - isolated, different, not as cute - and remember that what she is dealing with is so, so much worse. I cannot imagine having to deal with something like this in the 5th grade and beyond.

Thank God she thinks glasses are a treat. (And yes, his name really was Loren and he really wanted to be a truck driver.)

In Honor of Ashlee Simpson-Wentz's Motherhood, May I Present "Pieces of Me"

This is kinda fun and I've seen it on quite a few different blogs.

The Flickr Mosaic Meme Rules:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search

b. Using only the first page, pick an image

c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name? Teresa

2. What is your favorite food? Pizza

3. What high school did you go to? McCallum

4. What is your favorite color? Turquoise

5. Who is your celebrity crush? (Brad's gonna razz me incessantly about this.) Matt Damon

6. Favorite drink? Red wine

7. Dream vacation? Antigua (well, one of them...)

8. Favorite dessert? Creme Brulee

9. What you want to be when you grow up? Mature

10. What do you love most in life? My kids

11. One Word to describe you. Complicated

12. Your flickr name. 'Beetus (I don't have a flickr name - I guess blog name will work)

My favorite is the Hot Wheels collection. Get back, nostalgia!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

The seat warmer in my car, cream of wheat, salad with walnuts and craisins, colorful sharpies, L'occitaine hand cream, making my husband laugh, geraniums, tempurpedic, NESN from April to October, wool socks, building a stockpile of test strips, Tanglewood, lists, dunkin' coffee, squeezing my kids, fixin' up this old house.

Every Kiss Begins With K (and My Kids Fight All Day)

While cruising Deadspin the other day, I noticed the world "Kerfluffle." Now that's a good word. I like it. And out of nowhere other interesting K words came flooding into my head. In order: Kafkaesque, K-zone, Ketoacidosis, Kinetic, Knott's Berry Farm (not really a word, but there it was...), KTHXBAI (also not a word, but the most awesome combination of txt and lolcats.)

Well, krap with a k - what do I do with that nonsense? Let's use it as a writing prompt.

After a day full of kinetic activity at Knott's Berry Farm, where we ate enough jelly samples to send us all into ketoacidosis, the kids began kicking one another in the K-zone. Life as a parent of the karate kids is becoming Kafkaesque. I'm ready for a spa week. KTHXBAI.

Bless Me Great Pumpkin, For I Have Sinned

It has been three years since my last carving. My intentions are the best, but let's face it: I am the bah-Humbug of Halloween, a sinner on the devil's holiday.

I have been sick on more October 31sts than I can count. Once, in an ICU and this year in the ER for a migraine. (Didn't even get the 'good stuff' but that's another story.) And now, we are a diabetic family with an insatiable sweet tooth, which is a perfect disaster in the making. The Candy Man is my nemesis.

For dress-up, to sew would be divine, but those intricate, delightful and oozing with love handmade fairy costumes have never materialized. Haven't saved a dishwasher box to convert into a Rubik's cube, either. To top it off, I had simply the greatest idea for my own costume and swore to hell and half of Georgia that this year, I would make it happen - A Rod in a skirt with bobby socks and pumps, an Easter hat, gloves and handbag, a kaballah string and a vintage Madonna record. Perfect for scaring all those little Variteks and Pedroias knocking on the door for loot. Did. Not. Happen.

My biggest guilt is that I think the pumpkin carving thing is kinda gross. Especially now that you can buy such a nice selection of pre-fabricated pumpkin-themed junk at Garden Ridge (or our "Garden Ridge of the Northeast", the open year round Christmas Tree Shop.) For far too many a Hallows Eve, I have waited until the last minute, unintentionally denying my children the pleasure of scooping nasty-smelling orange gunk with a soup ladle, slinging it at one another and then fighting over the butcher knife. So with the best of intentions, we always have a punkin on the front porch. And it always rots, both its scare and pie potential unrealized.

But this year, a miracle occurred! Sometime on the evening of Friday, November 7, one or more yard perpetrators of the squirrel or chipmunk variety used it's gnarly little front teeth and carved a 6 inch diameter circle straight through our uncarved friend, eating its way to the middle, with a detritus of seeds strewn across the deck. The next day, the hole was larger and more of the middle nether-region had disappeared. And on the third day, they wiped out the buffet. So I rolled the giant gourd shell away to the curb, confident that those cute, but nasty yard rodents will do nature's dirty work and the pumpkin will rise again - from some random place in my yard late next summer.