The Pinewood Derby & Etc.

One thing I enjoy about getting older is when comparisons of my younger self vs. my older self actually illuminate some kind of positive change in my personality. (Speaking of younger self vs. older self and not-so-positive change . . . It's official. I have grey hair. It sprouted suddenly, appearing at my temples two weeks ago. Huh.) Anyway. Positive change.

I remember when Ethan was seven years old and going to our very first pinewood derby. He was in a neighborhood Cub Scout den, not a church one (hence the being 7 years old), and this pinewood derby was tricked OUT. Masses of humanity, multiple race tracks, names being called over the loudspeaker. The works. My friend's husband was an engineer and labored pretty intensively over his son's car. It rocked, winning heats and garnering approving murmurs from onlookers.  Our car, however, was most charitably described as, ahem, "a nice effort!" Needless to say, we were far from winning any of our heats, and although we didn't come in last every time, the overall showing wasn't the greatest.

And I cared. I really did care! I was anxious during the whole event and kind embarrassed at our showing, both for Ethan and for myself. I was also a little bit irritated, truth be told, that Forrest didn't spend night after night working on the car like the neighbor dad did. (Poor Forrest. So glad he still loves me.) I've slowly gotten better -- less neurotic, more realistic, and also less likely to worry about how my kids might feel if/when they "lose" -- as my years as a pinewood derby mother have unfolded since then. So it was with a real sense of personal progress that I drove to this year's stake-wide pinewood derby without nary a flutter of worry or care in my heart; instead, I looked forward to enjoying it as the slightly silly and mildly fun event that it actually is. I was even able to take pleasure in the fact that my hilariously creative 10 year old son decided to create a purple pinewood derby car festooned with a -- yes -- mustachioed unicorn. He named the car "The Deadly Unicorn of Awe," but we didn't have enough room, or enough stickers, to put the entire name on the car, so we resorted to using an acronym. Voila:

I hate to say it, but the mom that I was six or seven years ago might have tried to talk him out of creating a purple mustachioed unicorn car emblazoned with an incomprehensible acronym, instead encouraging him to make a more conventional bright red car with black lightning bolts on the sides. I am also quite certain that, in this one respect at least, the mom I am now is a better mom. So there's that.

Jonas did well, coming in first place in one heat and second place in the other three heats. (Dad has learned a thing or two about making pinewood derby cars over the years.) He still didn't make it to finals, but that was okay. His only disappointment was in not receiving the "Most Creative" award, which came with a giant Hershey's bar. He was in the running, to be sure, but when I saw the giant yellow bird car (that lost most of its races due to its commitment to the giant yellow bird theme at the expense of all aerodynamics), I knew we were done for.  Here's Jonas and the cute boys from our ward's Cub Scout den. You can see the yellow bird car on the right:

In other news, Elise got a part in the school play, a one act production that's a mashup, somehow, of Romeo and Juliet and The Wizard of Oz. She gets to be Glenda the Good Witch. She's very excited about the prospect of wearing a poofy dress and she and I had fun highlighting all her lines in the script. Oh, how I loved highlighting my lines in a script, back in the day.

Ethan got a hair cut and looks very handsome. I love that boy with a hair cut. (Sorry, no picture. He's an elusive species to photograph.) He's also rocking his grades this trimester (so far), did very well at the final sectionals speech tournament, and is writing a funny script about three superheroes that he and his friends are videoing. It's an ironic take on superhero-dom, a caveat I must include lest Ethan worry I've led you to believe that he's writing NON-ironic superhero scripts as a 14-year-old. Because that would be really embarrassing.

Wyatt told me yesterday that he loves me "all the way to South America." He also tells me daily that I have "beautiful hair." This helps make up for the fact that, unless I have scheduled a play date for him, or he's at preschool or McDonald's or a park or the movies, he torments me every nine minutes or so with the following statement:

"I can't have anything to do!"

Followed by the following question:

"What should I do, Mom?"

Sigh.

Forrest is training again, out there running and whatnot. He lost like six pound in a week. I love him despite this.

And me? Hmm. I've come to the kind of tough realization that it IS going to be hard to find an adjunct teaching job out here. Even as a freshman comp instructor. I've applied to the few openings that are posted -- we have a number of colleges in the Twin Cities, but very few of them are hiring -- and so far the response has been akin to crickets chirping in the night. I feel a little bit nonplussed at this development. (See, English department staffing people? I use words like nonplussed. Hire me!)  Although it's been nice to have free time, etc. etc., yadda yadda, I miss teaching. I really do. And it's kind of hard in a mid-life-crisisey kind of way to realize that I am an almost 40 year old with a spotty resume full of lots of Mormon lit credentials, credentials that probably do me more harm than good in some circles. (For example: if you were an English Department head and you received a CV for someone who had edited a magazine dedicated to "Jehovah's Witness Fiction," what would you assume about this person? Exactly.) Imagine me in a corner with a paintbrush, surrounded by sticky wet floor, wondering how in the world I ended up in this particular spot. It's such a cliche, I know.

But! It is spring. The sun is out, as is the grass, and I'm remembering how lovely it is to go outside and hear all the different styles of Midwestern birdsong.  And I don't have to grade any papers. No matter how much I like teaching, I will never (no NEVER) miss grading all those papers.  And I'm healthy and my children seem to like me, and at least one of them thinks I have beautiful hair even as it is graying. And Forrest will take me to Pei Wei so I can get pad Thai with chicken whenever I ask him.

And I've evolved into a human being who can approach pinewood derbies with the amused remove such an occasion actually warrants.  That is cause for at least a small amount of triumph, even if the lady at Century College refuses to email me back.

p.s. I've added a widget that links to previous blog posts with related topics from the past. It was fun to see the post I wrote about the pinewood derby Ethan did at Jonas's age. Technology!