You shook me up

I’m a California native, so I thought I’d be used to earthquakes by now. Nope. Never going to get used to being tossed around in bed in the middle of the night, books flying, glass shattering and dressers bouncing against the walls.
This Sunday’s earthquake was like some psycho wine country version of “Poltergeist.” Mother Nature grabbed hold of us that morning, shook us around like she was really pissed off and then walked away with her middle finger in the air.
I like to think I’m cool in a crisis, but when that quake hit I was screaming like a teenager. So were the girls. By the time I’d gotten to them in the hallway, it was over and all we could do was just clutch at each other.
Put shoes on, yelled my husband.
Shoes, right.
What are those again? My brain was not exactly working at that point.
Back next to the bed, I searched for shoes but a 2-foot pile of books covered them.
College Girl had spent the night at a friend’s house, so the first thing we did was try to call her. Amazingly, the phones worked. She was fine, physically.
Stay put, we told her. I had visions of a traumatized kid trying to drive on buckled roadways around fires and fallen branches.
In the hallway, the girls grabbed a small battery powered emergency light that had been plugged into a wall socket since after the 2000 earthquake. The week before, I’d thought of throwing it away because it’s old and has a pretty feeble light. Sunday morning that little light never looked so good.
Downstairs almost every step cracked as we walked over broken glass. The fish tank broke, said my husband. There was tank gravel and water everywhere. Balsamic vinegar had shattered all over the kitchen floor, mixing with spilled sugar. Actually, I think the sugar conveniently soaked up some of the vinegar.
Think you need to do some spring cleaning of your cabinets? Don’t waste your time. Just wait for an earthquake.
Like a lot of other Napans, we lost most of our dishes. Wine glasses fell into drawers that had been flung open, leaving glass shards inside them. Ceramic pots stored on the top shelves had broken into bits on the floor. I picked up one lid, still intact, to put it away for safekeeping.
Don’t bother, said my husband. The bowl broke.
Making my way to the front door, I peeked outside to see neighbors walking outside with flashlights.
You OK? they called out.
Yep, I answered feebly. I felt like barfing.
The rest of the downstairs was more of the same. Contents of every shelf facing east/west were dumped. Most north/south shelves had held firm.
I braced myself as I opened College Girl’s room, already filled to the brim with the contents of her school apartment.
Looks just like normal in there, I said with a laugh.
A firefighter neighbor came over to turn off the gas and check out our hot water heater. As it slowly started getting lighter outside the sound of broken glass falling into trashcans could be heard. The cleanup had begun.

Shred it

Free community “shred day,” read the ad from a Napa bank this past week.
That got my attention.
Free shredding? Count me in.
Who wants to sit for hours feeding old 401(k) statements three pages at a time into some wimpy home office shredder?
I’m into shredding. If you don’t shred, Identity Stealers can get a hold of your Important Info and then next thing you know you’re trying to convince Amazon.com it wasn’t the real you that bought that plasma TV, fancy sneakers and those $200 headphones.
I imagined the star of free shred day to be some super-sized shredding machine with giant gnashing and cutting jaws, ready to make mincemeat out of my old bank statements and health care EOBs. That’s my kind of shredding. Fast. Effective. Identity Stealer proof.
To get ready for shred day, first I cleaned out two file cabinets in our home office. Then I hit the mother lode in our attic.
Napa Garbage bill from June 1999? Got it.
Sears statement from December 2002? Yup.
I’m sure no one else cares about my Target receipts from November 2003 but I had kept them all just in case the IRS came knocking on my front door. Because no one wants to come up empty-handed when the IRS comes calling.
Hello IRS guys? You need receipts? Come on in! I got your receipts right here. Boxes full, and neatly labeled by year and month.
I hear I can get rid of receipts that are seven years or older, although as I write this, a tiny part of me worries I may be jinxing myself by doing so.
Dear any IRS receipt inspector people reading this: Our receipts are all very boring and uninteresting. Especially the Target ones — unless you need to know how much a mom spends on toilet paper in a month. With three toilets and five people in one home, a lot, I tell you.
On shred day I took a trunkful of my old receipts to the bank where a friendly woman helped me unload my car.
I took the lid off one box to show off my color-coded, organized folders.
Very nice, she nodded, before unceremoniously dumping my carefully filed and archived receipts and bank statements into a large gray garbage toter.
I felt a worrying twinge as I looked down into the bin at the jumble of papers. All those years of archiving, down the toilet.
I had to see the shredder in action. The garbage toter was dispatched across the parking lot to a man with a large white truck. My papers would end up as confetti-sized pieces, the shred man assured me.
Metal arms clamped around the container, hoisting it up into the truck and jettisoning the contents.
A video monitor of the inside of the machine showed the piles of paper being fed into the industrial-sized grinder. The shredding was even better than I imagined.
It was loud.
It was destructive.
It was completely Identity Stealer proof.

Ninja Mom

The Huffmans have “discovered” a new TV show. Well, it’s new to us. The rest of the country has apparently been watching “American Ninja Warrior” for a couple years, but we only just got hooked.
The show is a battle but no one’s getting their throat cut “Game of Thrones”-style on ANW (as we Ninja fans call it). “American Ninja Warrior” is a battle to complete a crazy obstacle course where competitors run, jump, dive, climb and pretty much act like superhuman monkeys.
The ultimate goal for ninjas is to make their way to the top of 70-foot “Mount Midoriyama” and be crowned “THE NEXT AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR!”
It’s a TV show that the whole family can watch. Who doesn’t want to be a ninja? Even better, a ninja warrior?
Would–be ninjas are all super-fit and mostly 20- and 30-somethings, and they know how to put on a show. Some have come up with their own Ninja themes. One guy ran the course wearing a Tarzan loincloth. Another wore something like a “Phantom of the Opera” mask. Another was cloaked in a shiny Superman-style getup including a cape he flung dramatically to the side before dashing across the ninja route.
My favorite Ninja is my new fitness superhero — 24-year-old Kacy Catanzaro. Just 5 feet tall and 100 pounds, Catanzaro was the first woman to climb the 15-foot Warped Wall AND make it to the top of the 25-foot-tall Spider Climb. She even has her own hashtag (#mightykacy). I don’t want to be 24 again, but I wouldn’t mind having Catanzaro’s ninja muscles.
The ninjas make it look so easy, but the ANW obstacles are meant to take out all but the most ninja-iest competitors. Even the obstacle names are intimidating: the Bridge of Blades, the Rumbling Dice and the Devil Steps. Fall off or drop off any of them and you’re out.
Channeling my inner Kacy Catanzaro, I decided to inject some ninja moves into my own life. During my last run, instead of staying on the sidewalk I ran — get this — on a dirt path. Then I jumped over a culvert, parkour-style. I know — radical, right?
I’m not going to stop there. I’ll use ninja moves to elude wayward drivers on the way to Target. I’ll scale shelves to reach the toilet paper on the top shelf at Raley’s. I’ll balance two baskets of laundry while running up steps to the second floor. Walking through downtown at lunchtime I’ll evade wandering tourists with ninja-like steps.
We moms also have mental ninja powers. We can keep track of multiple doctor/dentist appointments, memorize school bell schedules and the Social Security numbers of both our spouse and kids, simultaneously brush our teeth while quizzing a teenager about her curfew and can tell you exactly how many more days that gallon of milk in the fridge will last.
It’s no surprise. After all, it takes an American Ninja Mom to make an American Ninja Warrior.

Let's go Giants

It’s game day and the Huffmans are wearing their best combination of orange and black.
To celebrate our girl turning 20, my husband bought tickets to take the girls to a Giants game at AT&T Park.
I’ll go too, I say, to his surprise. The last time I went to a Giants game was 14 years ago, when the stadium opened.
But with College Girl home for a few short days, I don’t want to miss out on any mother-daughter time. Even if it’s her, me and 41,541 other people.
Ready to cheer on his team, my husband has on orange shorts, a black Day of the Dead print shirt and Giants hat. College Girl is wearing an orange Giants headband, Giants uniform jersey with “Posey 28” written on the back, black leggings and black Converse high-tops. She also carries a giant orange foam finger.
I’m wearing a plain orange T-shirt. I think I need to step it up a bit in the team spirit category.
Arriving at AT&T Park, we are immediately caught up in a swirl of thousands of other orange and black-clad people moving very quickly toward the entrance gates. Inside, we head up multiple ramps, higher and higher until we pop out at the top level of the stadium.
I learn that it’s bad baseball manners to find your seat when someone’s at bat, so we wait in a holding pattern at the entrance tunnel before the usher gives us the nod and we dash up the aisle. Our seats are at the top. The very top. Like small aircraft altitude. The rows are so steep I gulp as I look down, wondering how easy it’d be to just topple right over the edge onto first base.
My husband and the girls immediately announce an expedition in search of a specific vendor’s calamari stand but I’m happy to just get acclimated at my new perch and people watch.
A few rows below me, a man heads up the steep stairs precariously balancing two beers filled to the brim. I am sure he will spill them. He does not.
One couple get to their seats by climbing up and over empty seats like mountain goats.
I watch enviously as a group of fans pass a box of gourmet mini cupcakes back and forth. Why didn’t I think of that?
A woman two rows over wears a sparkly Giants tank top, Giants flip-flops and Giants stick-on tattoos under her eyes. I make a mental note to shop for a better Giants shirt at halftime, then remember there is no halftime in baseball.
Between one inning, a “kiss cam” puts seatmates on the spot. Some kiss cam couples give each other a PG-rated peck but the stadium goes nuts when one pair smooches dramatically. Another camera keeps going back to a dancing grandma wildly waving streamers. The crowd loves her.
During the game, everyone claps in perfect synchronization to certain songs. I catch onto the clap-clap-clap end of the “Let’s Go Giants” chant but a longer, more complicated clapping routine has me stumped until about the eighth inning. Then finally I get it. It’s the intro from “Car Wash.”
I’ve mastered all the clapping songs, I tell my husband, when he and the girls finally return with calamari, hot dogs and a soda in a big plastic Giants cup.
Now I just need a better T-shirt.

Run like the devil

Giving birth three times was hard, but after finishing my first half marathon I can now name the fourth hardest thing I ever did.
If you’d told me a year ago I’d run 13.1 miles, I would have said “What? You must have me mixed up with a much younger/fitter/way more ambitious mother runner.”
But after I heard about a half marathon to be held in Napa at the end of June, I signed up. A lot of it had to do with the sparkly race medal. I like accessories. I wanted that medal.
On race day, the first six miles felt great. A couple times I got the “Wow, I’m really doing this,” running chills. At the halfway mark, I looped around the turnaround cone and gave a big fist pump, feeling strong.
By mile 8, my pace had slowed a bit. I stopped for water and picked up two new people: a devil runner on one shoulder and an angel runner on the other shoulder.
They started talking to me.
Devil runner: “Why are you doing this? You could just walk. You don’t have to run.”
Angel runner: “Keep running. You trained for months for this. You can do it.”
At mile 10, my angel runner reminded me that I only had three miles to go.
“Three looooong miles to go,” taunted my devil runner.
At mile 11, there were only about 10 other runners around me.
Devil runner: “Look, everyone else is walking. You can walk.”
Angel runner: “You trained to run this distance. You can do it.”
Me: “Shut up both of you. I’m trying to finish this.”
A friend and her baby waited for me at mile 12 holding a big pink sign. “Trust your training,” it said.
“Only one mile to go,” she shouted as I wobbled past her.
Halfway through mile 12, I could see the finish way down the road. It was so close but so far away. My breathing was shot. My legs were jelly. Devil runner finally got me. I walked for a few minutes.
I saw another runner who’d already finished walk by me wearing her finisher’s medal. I hated that she was already done and I was still limping along, but there was no way I was not going to run across that effing finish line.
Angel runner: “You do not want to walk across that effing finish line.”
I started running again.
Near the end, I saw my husband. The girls are right ahead, he said. All three were there, even College Girl. I managed to give them a thumbs-up as I ran around the last turn. Crossing the finish, I saw my mom and my running coach.
“You did it!” they said.
I fell into them for a hug and burst into tears.
“It. Was. So. Hard.” I sobbed.
I grabbed my husband’s arm to keep from falling over while I bawled like a baby.
“Get your medal,” he reminded me.
Gasping, I put my prize around my neck. It was so beautiful.
Even my devil runner agreed.

Aloha

Until last week I’d never been to Hawaii. Most of our vacations had been to visit grandmas and grandpas, all the Texas relatives and that one time I almost pushed a Huffman teenager into the Grand Canyon.
But thanks to my husband, he and I got invited to this fancy schmancy wine festival at this fancy schmancy resort on Maui. At the Ritz-Carlton.
I’d never actually set foot in a Ritz. The only Ritz I knew was the crackers in my pantry. When we go on vacation we usually end up at a Hampton Inn or an aunt’s spare bedroom. There is no “staying at the Ritz” for the Huffmans.
You know the wine festival is only four days, my husband reminded me. We might have to leave the Ritz and move to a cheaper hotel after that, he said.
I looked at him.
Yes, I’ll leave the Ritz to go stay in a budget hotel, said no woman ever.
Luckily, the Ritz took pity on our formerly Ritz-free lives and gave us a very un-Ritz discount to stay a few extra days. Perhaps they wanted to avoid the ugly scene of me being dragged from their hotel kicking and screaming. Also crying.
Good thinking, Ritz people.
Wine people are usually pretty happy, but take 1,000 wine people, send them to the Ritz on Maui to drink wine, and you get a whole lot of wine people in a really good mood. In fact, everyone on Maui was in a really good mood. It must be the flowered shirts, leis and all that Aloha-ing.
Aloha hello, Aloha goodbye, Aloha peace, Aloha spirit. You can add “Aloha” to almost anything and the more you say it, the better you feel. I can see why people visit Hawaii and never leave. It’s Aloha-gotcha.
Besides someone making the bed every day for me, I liked the Ritz pool the best. They give you not one but two towels, one for covering the lounge chair and one for drying off. The pool guy/gal comes over to take your drink order and then personally delivers your pineapple juice. At one point, a Ritz pool guy carrying a tray of fruit walked to the edge of the pool, put down the tray, dived into the water, uniform and all, and then picked up the tray and carried it around to reach those of us floating in the pool. As if we Ritz guests couldn’t possibly swim five feet to meet him at the edge of the pool. But the best part was when another Ritz pool guy came over with a little cloth and offered to clean my sunglasses for me.
I have arrived, I told the woman sitting next to me. I am never ever ever leaving the Ritz.
Of course, then I had to leave the Ritz. It was time to go home. A home where there is no pool with endless piles of freshly folded towels, I clean my own sunglasses and the pineapple comes in a can.
Aloha Maui. Aloha Ritz. I miss you already.

Grad girl

I’ve spent the past 17 years dropping off and picking up Huffman girls at our same elementary/middle school, but it’s all over.
The youngest Huffman has graduated from eighth grade.
I graduated too — I’m now the parent of only high school students. No more K-8 for me. I’ve mom-triculated.
Over the past school year, I’d been keeping track of each “last.” Last back to school night. Last Halloween carnival. Last Spuds with Buds lunch. Last jogathon. Last science fair.
As the mom of two older girls, I know what happens next. They go on to high school, and mom and dad are definitely not invited. High school doesn’t have room parents, Chinatown trip chaperones and Spaghetti with Your Sweetheart.
I saw it coming. Since the youngest Huffman started eighth grade, she made it clear that mom should not linger on the playground. I should also not: take any photos with my iPhone during morning assembly, talk to any of her friends or ask any questions upon picking her up after school. I should just drive. And immediately change the radio to Hits 1.
All the lasts left me feeling ridiculously nostalgic about anything to do with our school.
The other day, I stayed for one last morning assembly. I got all choked up during the Pledge of Allegiance. I’ll never say the Pledge at our school again!
I looked at the girls wearing their matching red plaid skirts. No Huffman girl will ever wear the plaid again!
I listened to our principal’s daily announcements, all of which seemed especially poignant. I’ll never hear the morning announcements again!
I took one last walk down the main hallway in the school. There were the dozens of graduating class photos lining the walls, the statue of Mary, Jenny, the school secretary and the little first-grader desks. I’ll never see them again!
Of course you will, I said. Snap out of it. The school isn’t going anywhere. But our girl definitely is.
The actual graduation ceremony distracted me from more moping about all the “lasts.” The eighth-graders were all dressed up in their Sunday best and looking very much like the 14- and almost-15-year-olds they are. The girls tottered down the aisle in their heels and new dresses, and the boys wore ties and new dress shirts.
Grandmas and grandpas, sisters and brothers, grads from years past and grads to come filled the church pews, hooting loudly for their favorites. The eighth-graders had prepared a song they’d spent weeks rehearsing. As they began to sing, our school’s music director moved her hands and arms, coaxing harmony from even the most reluctant teen singers.
Later, each grad gave their parents a flower and little note. “Thank you for the gift of love each day,” it read. “I don’t say it enough,” but “I love you.”
Are you crying? asked our middle daughter.
No, I said, as I wiped away my tears.