Last fall, Nick had to write a research paper for his English Composition course, so he decided to write about baseball (shocking!). And being ever so resourceful, he actually communicated directly with Pirates pitcher Jason Grilli via Twitter and asked if he could maybe sit down and interview him… in the name of education, of course! Grilli said “sure!” and gave Nick the contact info for his PR guy so that they could set up a time and place for this interview. (And I’m thinking to myself, “only my husband…!”). So, the next week, Nick was on his way to PNC Park, where he got to meet with Jason Grilli in the Pirates dugout, of all places, and conduct this interview (Nick got the whole thing on video, and it’s pretty awesome, I must say).

In order to GET to the dugout, the Pirates People gave Nick a Press Pass. So, when the interview was over, Grilli shook Nick’s hand and took off… leaving Nick to just wander around in the depths of PNC Park (again, I’m thinking to myself, “only my husband…!”). So, Nick wanders and finds himself standing outside of the indoor batting cages. And then he turns around and who does he run RIGHT into??? Why, Garrett Jones, of course. (Only my husband!!!)

Now, at this point in the story, I fall over laughing… because I can only imagine what Jonesy was thinking when he found himself face-to-face with my husband in the belly of PNC Park. Probably something along the lines of, “Who let THIS guy in here???” There’s no doubt in my mind that Jonesy knows Nick by sight by now… he’s outside after every game, talking to him like they’re old friends. (He did quit chasing him through the streets of Pittsburgh after the initial stalking incident!) And about halfway through the season last year, Nick asked Jonesy one night about the bats he uses… because Nick really wanted to get a “made-for-Garrett Jones” bat to hang on our Pirates wall/shrine. When he told Jonesy what he wanted it for, Jonesy said, “I’ll get you a bat, man.” So, that was Nick’s goal in life for MONTHS, after each game at PNC Park. But the timing never worked out (Jonesy actually gave ANOTHER guy Nick’s bat one night when Nick wasn’t there; that was a sad, sad night!)… and at this point, he still hadn’t gotten Jonesy’s bat.

So, when Nick finds himself standing outside of the batting cages, chatting it up with Garrett, he says, “Hey, Garrett… remember when you told me you’d get me that bat?” Garrett says, “Oh yeah, sure… here… I think there’s one right here.” And, guess what? He gave Nick a Made-for-Garrett-Jones bat.

And I’m pretty sure Nick’s feet didn’t touch the floor the whole way out of PNC Park that day.

So, fast forward a few months to today… when the custom-made CASE that Nick has ordered for this beloved bat arrives at our house. Nick was worse than a kid on Christmas. This case is something else. It’s beautiful wood. Velvet-lined. Holds the bat and a ball (we might have a FEW Garrett Jones-autographed balls lying around this house… just a few). Oh, and it has lights. Yes… lights. As in battery-powered lights that attach to the top of the case and shine down on this bat. (I’m giggling on the inside at this point, thinking, “For real???”) But, okay… lights. Nick is showing me how this works, and he’s so excited (kid on Christmas, I’m tellin’ ya). Then, Avery says, “Hey, Dad, what’s this key for?” Oh, because you can LOCK this case… so no one can steal the bat. And I’m thinking, “Okay, so they’d have to steal the whole case instead, which isn’t much bigger than the bat, so big deal.” UNTIL my husband then goes on to explain that… this case? You don’t just sit it on a shelf. Oh, no. It has a spot, hidden behind the velvet lining, so that you can SCREW IT DIRECTLY INTO THE WALL. Into the wall, People. And Nick tells me this with this huge “Aha! See there???” shit-eating grin on his face (we’re wayyy beyond Christmas at this point… I don’t really even have words for it).

And at this point, I can’t control myself any longer. I bust out laughing… like, snorting and falling out of my chair and my eyes are watering and I’m starting to choke I’m laughing so hard. And I say to my husband, “We don’t have ANYTHING locked up in this house… nothing we own. But thank God we can lock up that BAT.” (More hysterical laughing.) I say, “Yeah, come on in and take whatever you want… but you won’t get the Garrett Jones bat because, look! It’s MOUNTED ON THE WALL, Sucker!!!!!!”

Nick then looks at Avery and says, “Avery, I think she’s making fun of me!” Ya think??? Of course, that made me laugh even harder. I was a hot mess for a while there. Seriously worked up.

I know I’m going to sleep better tonight, knowing that the Garrett Jones bat that we’ve so carelessly left lying out in the open for anyone to run in here and snatch is now securely locked up in its custom-made, velvet-lined, lighted case.

Oh, and also… my husband is freakin’ adorable!!

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Not sure why I’m finding that so difficult!!!!

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It certainly doesn’t feel like a year ago that I was posting here, telling you all about her seventh birthday! Time flies, that’s for sure.

Her day yesterday started like this:

The child is a slug and does NOT like to get out of bed in the morning… I can’t imagine where she gets that from! We had big shopping plans, so Nick, Damon, and I were anxiously waiting for Avery to WAKE UP!!!

She finally did… around noon. And we went shopping. Shopping at the mall the day after Christmas is NOT the most fun thing I’ve ever done. But it’s what Avery wants to do every year on her birthday, so we fight the crowds and shop ’til we drop!! This year, Avery’s big stores were Justice and Claire’s… where she stocked up on all sorts of girly junk! Then, Daddy bought her a netbook… that she’s beyond thrilled with.

After hours of shopping, we met Grandma at a restaurant in town that Avery picked for her birthday dinner. She loves this place because her grandmother once showed her that they have KENO there. And every eight year old must gamble on her birthday!! Grandma brought balloons and flowers and a cake… and bought Avery a Keno ticket and a birthday Shirley Temple to drink.

Fun was had by all. Yummy food was eaten. The birthday girl ate macaroni and cheese bites, chicken nuggets, and mozzarella sticks. A fabulous fried meal! AND… she won $51 on her Keno ticket, and that just about put her over the moon!

After dinner, she came home and cuddled up with her new blanket (that she bought at Justice) and her new netbook.

I think she had a pretty great birthday! I know that I thoroughly enjoyed the day spent with my diva princess. Happy Eighth Birthday, Monkey!!

After being home for 12 years, this has been a huge shock to my system. And I pretty much feel like my world has tilted on its axis… or, rather, it’s done a few somersaults! But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I’m working in downtown Wheeling, WV, about a 40-minute drive from home. And the commute is not horrible. It’s an easy drive down (or up) the river. Easy for now, that is, until snow and ice arrive in the Ohio Valley… and then I might change my tune about the ease of my commute!

I work for an outsourcing company that takes care of document services for large law and financial firms around the world. My particular position is a legal proofreader for a law firm (that shall remain nameless because the Men in Black might jump down and cart me away if I divulge that information) that’s headquartered in New York City. In my office, there are two types of people: document processors and proofreaders. The DPs pretty much create whatever the attorneys (or their minions) request… and we proofreaders go behind them and make sure everything looks right. And we generally pass one project back and forth between the DPs and the proofreaders fifty times before it’s deemed perfect and ready to be sent back to the requestor. It’s quite a process.

Since November 8th, I’ve been in training, learning the ins and outs of how this process works. It’s similar enough to the editing work I’ve been doing for the last 13 years that I don’t feel totally lost. It’s different enough that I’m not totally bored. It’s not in my house, which is a HUGE plus!

For training these past several weeks, I’ve worked a “normal shift”: Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. Yesterday was officially my last day of training (YAY!!). So, next week, when I go back to work, I’ll be starting my regular shift, which is Wednesday through Sunday, midnight to 9am. Yes, I’m working nights… and weekends. And I’m not at all sure HOW that’s going to go… but I’ll find out soon enough! Luckily, my husband is now a full-time student, so his daily schedule is more flexible than mine… we’ve pretty much switched places. Now, he’s Mr. Mom, here taking care of the kids and the dogs and the house and making sure everyone eats a couple of times a day. I’m gone from home 11 hours each day, which leaves me feeling very disconnected from my family… and that’s beyond strange, considering I’ve been HERE, with them, for the last 12 years. Huge changes for all of us.

But I am enjoying this new adventure, for the most part. I’m pretty thrilled that, after being home for so long, I actually found a job that is pretty perfect for me. And it seems like a good company to work for, with a nice working environment and good people.

I am kind of missing my pajamas these days, though. We don’t spend nearly enough time together anymore. Maybe once I start working midnights no one will care if I wear flannel??

In recent years, I’ve been craving those Christmas cookies that we used to make. So, this year, I got the recipe from Mary and decided to try my hand at making them all on my own. I’m not a great baker like my stepmom. In fact, I had to go out and buy a rolling pin just for this baking event. And the cookie cutters… and the measuring cups/spoons… and the sprinkles…

I discovered that I don’t really have enough counter space for rolling out cookies. And my kids weren’t much help when it came to decorating (little urchins!). And I’m still not much of a baker. I ran out of steam before I got through half of the dough. And, uhhh, the second half of the dough is still sitting in my fridge, almost a week later.

BUT, the cookies tasted just like I remember. My craving was satisfied. And even though my kids had more fun playing in the flour than helping me, I had wonderful memories of being in the kitchen with Mary to keep me company!

I’ve been wanting to blog for weeks now but just didn’t know how to find the words, honestly. But I’m having blogging withdrawals at this point… and I can’t move on until I blog about this, so bear with me as I try to make some sense of November here.

November started out okay, like any month starts out. I don’t really even remember what we were doing the first few days of November, to tell you the truth. But I can tell you, in detail, what we were doing the night of November 4th…

November 4th: Nick had to DJ a middle school dance from 6pm to 10pm on that Friday night. Damon went with him to help… and make a buck or two. So, Avery and I were looking forward to a girly night at home. We started out by taking a trip to K-Mart, where we stocked up on new coloring books and my favorite Crayola Twistable colored pencils (they color more like crayons than pencils, and they’re awesome… just FYI!). As we were leaving K-Mart, Nick called… and asked me if I could run home and bring him his computer bag, which he’d left at home accidentally.  So, Avery and I went home, brought Nick his computer bag, and brought Damon home with us at this point (he’d helped Dad with the manual labor part of unloading his equipment and he really didn’t want to sit at the dance all evening). We finally got home and Avery and I settled in to color. Damon actually joined us at one point. So all three of us were piled on Avery’s twin bed, coloring. I’m pretty sure I even posted a pic of it on Facebook… it was a nice moment.

Then, at 9:30pm the phone started ringing. First the house phone rang… and I couldn’t get to it in time. Then my cell phone rang. It was Nick, which didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was that my husband was hysterical on the other end of the phone. To the point where I couldn’t understand a word he was saying to me. I recognized something that sounded like “bad news”… and my mind is going a million miles a minute, thinking he’s been in a car accident. But he’s okay because he’s talking to me. And, wait… he’s DJing ’til 10pm, so he wouldn’t have been out driving at 9:30. Then, I make out a few more words… five words that shook me to the core, that changed our whole family… in the blink of an eye: “My dad died this morning.”

I immediately screamed, “WHAT??” and asked him what happened, even though I wasn’t even processing this information enough to know what I was thinking and/or asking. To say I was shocked would be putting it mildly. Exactly one week earlier, we’d spent 4 hours on Skype with Gordon. Four hours. It had been months since we’d talked to him, so when Nick got him on Skype that night, the conversation just went on and on and on. At the time, I was mildly annoyed… because conversations between Nick and his dad tend to be repetitive and tedious. Now, I’m forever grateful that they had those 4 hours. We had no way of knowing those would be the last 4 hours that we’d ever spend “with” Gordon. That that would be the last time he’d ever talk to one of his kids and “see” any of his grandkids.

A lot of that Skype conversation was spent talking about Gordon’s plans to come home to the States the following month. It’s been 4 years since he was home last… Christmas of 2007… and it sounded like he was REALLY looking forward to this trip. He was also in the process of trying to get his girlfriend Michele a Visa so that she could travel home with him. As anxious as he was to get home and see his family, he was just as anxious to bring Michele to America with him… to introduce her to his country, like she’d been introducing him to hers for the last several years.

The day before Gordon passed away, they received the bad news that Michele’s Visa application was denied. According to a coworker of his in Shanghai, Gordon was visibly upset by the news… and left work early that day. The next morning (November 5th in China, the night of November 4th here in the States), Gordon suffered a stroke and died at home, with Michele by his side. He would have celebrated his 64th birthday just 4 days later.

We would spend the next 3.5 weeks trying desperately to get him home from China. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine how complicated that process would be! And I now completely understand why it is our custom to have a funeral and burial as soon as possibly following a death. The funeral allows us the time and opportunity to grieve for our loss, and then we can begin to put the pieces back together and move on with our daily lives. But our family was basically on hold for 3.5 weeks and couldn’t go through this grieving process. So, when the time finally came, on November 28th, I think it hit us even harder than it would have 3 weeks earlier.

We also spent those weeks trying desperately to get Michele a Visa so that she could come home for Gordon’s funeral… to say her final goodbyes with the rest of us; we knew that’s what he would have wanted. However, she was once again denied that opportunity by the U.S. Embassy… despite the fact that we had a huge team of legal experts, politicians, and various others working on this. Apparently they are really terrified that a Chinese citizen will come to America and stay here… although, why she’d want to after all of this is beyond me!! So, sadly, Michele wasn’t able to join us for Gordon’s funeral. They did, however, have a memorial service for him in Shanghai, so I hope that brought her some closure.

It never occurred to me that at this point in our lives Nick and I would be dealing with the death of one of our parents. We were absolutely, 100% unprepared for this. Even now, a month later, it’s still rather unbelievable to me.

And, in the midst of all this, on November 8th I started a new job. As exciting as this was for me, considering it’s the first time I’ve worked outside of my house (and outside of my jammies!) in 12 years… Gordon’s death overshadowed it, just a little bit! And understandably so. But I have been working for almost a month now… and to sum it up, I’m LOVING it! I’ll have to write another post about the job later, since this one is turning into a novella!

So, that was November… in a nutshell. Definitely a month full of surprise and change. Definitely a month to remind us all to cherish every moment we’re given. Life can be so short and nothing is guaranteed… and a million other cliches that I won’t bore you with here. I’ll probably revisit parts of this past November in future posts, as things come to me. But I had to get this post written first. I think that, in a way, this is as natural a part of my grieving process as the funeral.

For now, I’ll leave you with this… the Quintessential Gordon Witschey. This was the last picture I took of Gordon, on Christmas Day almost four years ago. He and Nick had been standing outside smoking, and I tried to sneak out there to take a picture of the two of them together. Only, I was too late… they were walking back in at that point. So I just snapped this random picture of Gordon, not knowing that 4 years later it would take my breath away when I saw it. That I, and everyone else, would look at this picture and say, “THAT is Gordon.” The cigarette, the Bayer jacket, the glasses… everything about this photo is typical Gordon. This is how I will always remember him.

I wasn’t sure whether Damon would even want to dress up this year. He’s almost 11 and seems to be outgrowing lots of “kid” stuff at this point. But he did want a costume. I’m not sure WHAT his costume is supposed to be… something dark and scary! Avery wanted to be a vampire, and her favorite parts of her costume were her purple fingernails and red hair.

I, for one, am thankful that Halloween is over for another year. It’s not my favorite holiday… in fact, it’s probably one of my least favorite holidays. I just don’t get excited about dressing up and spending a fortune on crappy costumes that my kids will only wear for 2 hours!

I’m ready to move on to some “real” holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Those I can get excited about!!

Nick and I are so proud of Damon. He loves to play ball, and he’s come a long way in the few years that he’s been playing. I can remember his first year of Fall Ball, when he couldn’t catch to save his life. And now, he’s on a championship-winning team. I have to give tons of credit to my husband, too. Nick always has five million things going on at any given time, but he almost always finds the time to take Damon to the batting cages or throw ball in the front yard… something. If Damon didn’t have such a hands-on dad, doing these things with him, he’d probably never get off of the Xbox! (Because, ummm, his mother is not very athletic!)

I took one video at tonight’s game… and, luckily, Damon got a hit while I had the camera rolling. You can see it, and hear me yelling, here. This happened in the bottom of the 5th inning. The game was tied, 4-4. Damon got on board with this hit, stole second, and with the next hit, he scored the go-ahead run. The final score, after 6.5 innings, was 6-4. And we had some very excited boys on our hands!!

I almost had an asthma attack after running around the field to get these post-game pics of the champs… but it was worth it!

Huge congrats to our Weirton boys! We’re so proud of them and all of their hard work this season. Most importantly, I love that they all seem to be enjoying themselves out there. There’s not much that puts a smile on Damon’s face… but baseball definitely does it! I’m already anxious for the Spring season to start!!!

So, now we’re home. Nick is fiddling with his laptop, getting a playlist ready for a birthday party he’s DJing later. Damon is in his room, playing his Xbox. And I was just sitting on the loveseat, staring at my daughter, who is sprawled out on the couch… reading. And, suddenly, I was taken back in time, ohhhhh, about 28 years. To when I was Avery’s age (maybe even a little bit older), and I could almost always be found with my nose in a book.

For years, I’ve been trying to turn my children into readers. They’re both GREAT readers, meaning they score very high on reading tests and are in advanced reading groups at school… and they both read way about their grade levels. So I know that Damon CAN read and comprehend… and every now and then he sits down with a book. But he seems to lose interest rather quickly, like, after a chapter or two.

Avery, on the other hand, is my child. (Just in case there was ever any doubt! We don’t look alike or anything! lol) Last night, I bought her an ebook that she could read on my Xoom tablet. And she sat down and read the whole thing is less than an hour, while the rest of us were watching postseason baseball on TV. Today, I “checked out” some library ebooks for her… and here she is, right now:

She’ll more than likely sit there until she’s finished with that book. And maybe she’ll start another one after that. I so recognize the look on her face, even, as she loses herself in the story. Replace that Xoom tablet/ereader with an actual hardback book… and that was definitely me two decades ago!

Nick just came in as I was typing this and said, “She’s got all these different facial expressions going while she’s reading… just like YOU!” Yep. Exactly.

I’m about 99% sure that Avery will be getting her first ereader this Christmas. Because, personally, I LOVE seeing her just like this on a Saturday afternoon: