A hiatus

I'll be taking a break from this blog for a bit.

If you just can't get enough of our shenanigans, check here every Monday.

I'll be back in a little while.

To serve and protect

Tonight I finally had my ride-along with a Brentwood Police officer. It's late now, so I'll just say that these two photos perfectly illustrate the range of stuff I saw during an 8-hour shift this evening.

The one in which Mom lets go a little bit

Just made the last school lunch of the year.

That's my favorite benchmark because I feel like I get in such a rut with brown-bagging.

Next year the twins will make their own; they just don't know it yet.

So as I face another summer as cruise director for three boys, I have to look back at how much they've grown.

It is weird to compare your parenting style to your own parenting style, but it's easy when your kids are seven years apart.

I did it yesterday as I sat at Crockett Park watching Owen take part in the last day of Brentwood Blaze football camp.

He loved it, and I've never seen one of my kids so suited for a sport.

When Mason left the Blaze after one year, I couldn't wait to say goodbye to that part of our life.

I remember thinking it was too much: practice four days a week plus a game, traveling to far-flung areas of the Nashville Metropolitan area to play other teams. In third grade!

But we got a lot out of it. To this day the whole family can look at each other and say, "Remember those Hendersonville boys? Man, they were HUGE!" And we all feel grateful to have survived that trip to Drakes Creek Park.

I remember thinking I didn't want Mason to get burnt out on football before he played in middle school. Now I think he should have stayed in it because boys learn a lot in that level of football.

The thing about football coaches is that they are tough, in a good way, though.

This three-day camp had more than 100 boys participating, from kindergarten through about sixth grade.

The organizers did a great job running boys of all ages through the same drills. The expectation was that the kids could do it, and even the "pee-wees," as mine was called, felt they could do it.

T-ball and baseball are different, somehow.

The coaches are still dads, but there's just more babying going on. At football camp, the atmosphere is all hustle, all the time. If you don't hustle, you're gonna get attention you don't want.

So they hustled. Nobody threw a fit, like you see in the baseball dugout sometime. Nobody checked out mentally and started playing in the dirt. On the football field, there's not a lot of down time for anyone. They're always either running, throwing, pushing or pulling someone, so you don't hear anyone getting a hoarse reminder to pay attention.

Sometimes when they're waiting in line to do a drill, they'll turn around and mess with each other, but that's part of it. Once the coach calls you sharply by the last name, you won't get caught doing that again.

The other funny thing was watching Mason micromanage Owen during camp. Mason paced the sidelines on the first day and followed Owen from drill station to drill station, occasionally yelling at him to turn around or get his fingers out of his mouth.

By the second day Mason had calmed down and just offered encouragement or constructive feedback.

I remember when my older boys were that little, my most feared enemy was older boys. Because older boys knew things and said things I didn't want my boys to know or say yet.

I should have trusted my boys more, though. Watching Owen turn around to listen to some evil second-graders fiercely yelling at each other to shut up and talking trash that verged on potty mouth, I could tell in his face that even he didn't like how they were talking to each other, and he didn't join in.

Crisis averted!

For now.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

Had a fun new job last week that, thankfully, was temporary.

Skip this if you don't want to read about dog barf

Allow me to write about my dog for a moment.

We have a 3-year-old Mastiff named Lucy who really is the best dog in the world.

She has no annoying habits that I can think of. She only barks when strangers cross our property line. She does exactly what we say exactly when we say it.

She stands quietly in front of the back door when she wants to go out. When she's done chasing squirrels, she comes to the back door and barks once. Every time. In the car, she sits quietly in the seat.

She doesn't beg for food. Even if we leave food out or have a trash bag momentarily unsupervised in the kitchen, she ignores it.

The worst thing she does is pester the heck out of people who visit by nudging them relentlessly if they are not constantly petting her.

Oh, and she takes up most of our bed, when we let her up there and I put out a fleece blanket.

But she does this one thing that I find so weird.

She is a stealth barfer.

Most dogs make a huge ordeal out of upchucking. There's usually a random awakening from a nap followed by dramatic heaving with that weird repetitive urp noise that makes the entire household run around screaming.

I mean, who hasn't tried to grab a wretching dog around the ribs in an attempt to drag it outside while someone else in the house flings open the nearest door? It's one time when all family members unite for a common cause: clean carpet.

The thing about Lucy is that we never get our chance to experience all that drama because she gives no pre-vomit warning. I'll just be walking through the house, heading to one of the bedrooms with a load of folded laundry, and on the floor in a corner of the room I'll spy a pile of what looks like dog food.

I'll spare you the details, but it does look like someone just poured a little pile of Beneful in the corner between the wall and that ottoman.

Thankfully I've found these gifts soon after they're left. At least I think I have.

Better go take a stroll around the house.

How the water made such a mess

This link shows security camera footage of the flood last week as four feet of water came into a Pep Boys store.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

Some days I really feel old around all the young mommies at our elementary school.

500 Year Storm in Nashville

The top photo is our local YMCA, which is not quite a mile from my house. The water reaches the steps that lead into the building. The bottom photo shows an intersection on a state highway that is the main drag through my part of town. This is Concord Road looking west toward Lipscomb Elementary and the YMCA. The Little Harpeth River is flowing across the street.

Click on the photos to get a better look.

Start building the ark

Our house is OK, but just two doors down from us is another story.

I took the photo at left of a front yard two doors down from us. The top photo shows the creeks that converge at the back of our lot. Based on what I've seen in the neighborhood, a creek at the back of your property is better than a creek at the side of your property.

I don't have anything clever to say about it. My mind is waterlogged.

Just file it in the back of your mind for future reference.

Nashville Monsoon of 2010

Today our area had the worst flooding in more than 30 years.

We were celebrating Tim's birthday at Mexicali Grill, and we knew it was raining, but we didn't know how bad it really was until we drove past the tornado siren right when it went off.

When we got home, the three creeks that converge at the southeast corner of our backyard had already spread across our neighbor's yard and touched the front door two doors down.

Of course, the aforementioned whirlybirds had all settled in our gutters.
"Mom, look outside Henry's window! It's a waterfall!"

Woo hoo! Happy Birthday, honey!