Christmas Letter 2010

December 2010

Deerfoot Lane

Bethany Community

Portland

Oregon

United States of America

Earth

 

Merry Christmas to all. We hope this greeting finds you well. If you’re receiving this letter, it is because we sent it to you. If you no longer wish to receive such correspondence, then please change your address. If you have no idea who we are, then read on:

We are the Padburys. More specifically, the Washington County Padburys-North. Here we are doing a little “Urban Camping.” This is a compromise we reached, because half the family has allergies and the other half doesn’t like to be away from the internet for any length of time. (That and the fact that we’d kill each other cooped up in anything less roomy than a circus big top.) You see the Shaelin/Isen Principle comes into play. Similar in outcome to matter/antimatter reactions, such confinement would surely tear a hole in the fabric of space (or at least in our tent.) So this is as close as we get to “The Wild.” We burn dunnage I bring home from work, start the fire with gasoline, Char-B-Q critters—the whole nine yards. Yeah, we’re the Bethany Hillbillies.

Our kids love snow. Every other year we trek over to Butte, Montana to spend Christmas with my mom. We always look forward to a white Christmas. Here are the kids sledding the hill below St. James Hospital. If you study the photo closely, you may notice that snowfall was disappointing last year. But grass sledding beats overcast and drizzling any day.

At some point, when we weren’t looking, our daughter Arianna (13) became this young woman seen here:

Just to clarify, these are all recent photos of the same chameleonic person. Her life routine consists of the School-Dance-Texting- Sleep endless loop. She chose to attend the Health & Science magnet school and is doing very well. They do lots of healthy and sciency stuff there. She continues to study every form of dance known to man (except for the one in which I’m proficient.) “Line-Dancing is coming back, Sweetie – you just wait.” In her off time she creeps around the woods playing army, shooting people with an Airsoft rifle (full disclosure—she lets me go with her). I fail to understand though, how at home she can be screaming for help cause she saw a spider the size of the period at the end of this sentence, but after she dons her “Deuce Gear” and heads into the woods she’s yelling at us “Ground Pounders” to check our ammo and fall in. We then proceed to crawl through dirt and ditches teeming with beetles, centipedes, and HUGE spiders—not that I’M scared or anything—I’m just sayin’. But sometimes we have to leave early though, so she can make it to her ballet pointe class. Fun facts: She averages 9000 texts/month and 5 hours of sleep/night.

(11) Shaelin’s current interests (as of the writing of this letter— in the time it takes to email this, those may have changed) include: reading, soccer, basketball, reading, performing arts (Hip Hop, Jazz, and Glee), recreational math, and reading. She (temporarily) shelved Lacrosse, Softball, Taekwondo and Ballet. Recently, she started indoor soccer. It’s played in what looks like a hockey rink, but with astroturf. It’s much faster paced than typical Oregon outdoor-rainy-windy- muddy-freezing cold-“What are we doing here?”-soccer and we are thinking that we might even like watching the indoor games BETTER. And of course, watching my wife pound on the glass while screaming at the ref is priceless.

Shaelin already knows far more about sports than her father, but then my talents in most sports are limited to purchasing the equipment. Her school teacher is really into sports. He has been showing them how to apply the math they’re learning to calculate sports statistics. She can tell you the odds of a team winning its next game and something about a spread. In class they’re having “contests” “predicting” outcomes of upcoming games…there are prizes involved…hmmm….

While we don’t share similar talent in sports betting, what Shaelin and Burke do share is hearing loss in the same frequencies. Our audiograms are nearly identical and the audiologists are quite intrigued. Originally, they told me mine was Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL), but unless Shaelin is picking up some night work at a local construction site (unlikely), the doctors are now suspecting a genetic element. As an interesting aside, my uncle’s cousin is married to my brother-in-law’s father, who happens to be an audiologist—I’ll let you work the math, but the hillbilly angle should be becoming clearer. Anyway, he checked my hearing the other day. So, according to this EXPERT, and CONTRARY to my wife’s opinion, there has been no significant degradation in hearing ability over the last 3 years. (Listening ability, though, is a different matter entirely.)

(8) Isen’s Sports Action includes soccer, baseball, basketball, and hockey. He’d like to add in Lacrosse as well. In the world of dance, he tapped for a while, but has narrowed his focus to Hip Hop and Break Dancing—the Classics. As you can see from the various pictures, Isen has some sort of a hair disorder. Its color and shape change randomly.

He enjoys all manner of wheeled modes of transportation. Skateboards, Razors, bikes, dirt bikes, scooters, etc. and is becoming proficient with all of them. One day at the skate park, I thought I might show him some of my skills on this skateboard/scooter hybrid thing he has. (Those of you who know me well have already deduced how this story ends.) “Dad, it’s a little different than a normal...” “Yeah, yeah, whatever…I’m going to get my line down, and then I want you to film my second run.” Well, there wouldn’t be a second run for me that day and I should have had him film the first run. Might have made us $10k on that home movie show. I’m sure we’ve all had such moments—the confusion in thinking, “Why am I upside down…and airborne? And where’s the skateboard?” My ribs found the skateboard. Fortunately, because of inclement weather, there weren’t any witnesses or other skaters I was blocking by lying there in the middle of the park in a puddle of rain. Isen was soon hounding me, “Get up Dad! Why won’t you get up? You always tell me to get up.”  “This is different!” I wheezed. Isen spent the next 20 minutes seeing how close he could skate to me without actually hitting me. But lying on concrete in the pouring rain gives a man time focus and contemplate things: “How long does it take for my kidney to bleed out?...I wonder if they can get Life Flight in here with all these trees?” The doctor and the x-rays tell me I’m not 18 anymore. They might be right.

Mishelle (29) has become quite the scheduling ninja. Somehow she manages to get all 3 of our kids to all their activities even when they have identical start times. Either her vehicle is able to warp space-time to allow her to accomplish this amazing feat, or she’s just really good at time management. I’d need a DeLorean. She volunteers her time at our kids’ schools and their other events. In her spare time she continues her employ at a nearby pre-school and in her spare-spare time can be found putting together marketing materials for a consultant group.

Burke (106)—umm, builds stuff.

Recently, Mishelle had mentioned some COMPLETELY AGE-UNRELATED hip and back pains. I know what you’re thinking—exactly what I thought—these subtle hints screamed Inversion Table! So I got her this “gift”, which as it turns out, ranked right up there with the Clothes Iron (stainless steel…auto-steam…SWIVEL CORD!) or the Bathroom Scale (it was DIGITAL)—some of my previous “gifts.” So, who out there is happy they’re not married to me? All right, all right, quiet down. Apparently, I should have factored into my purchasing decision the vertigo she experiences (usually while I’m driving) and from there extrapolated that getting her a mechanical apparatus in which she needs to hang upside-down like Batman might not be the best for her (“blood shooting out of my eyes” was some of the noted feedback), regardless of the spine straightening and joint pressure relief it might offer. Anyway, it’s available: $50 OBO.

Our dog Frodo passed away a few months ago. He got sick and was gone within 24 hours. It is very sad for us. He really was part of the family and is sorely missed.

Actually, it’s been a tough year for pets around here. Our two cats “Lucky” and “9 Lives” were eaten by the local wildlife.

Coyotes are a protected species out here in CrazyTown. A human needs to be, not merely injured, but “seriously injured” to engender action by the authorities. I’m having trouble imagining a scenario in which I’m in the process of being mauled by a coyote where I’d be saying to myself, “This isn’t so serious.” Fortunately, years of watching Lion King with Elton John crooning about the “Circle of Life” helped our kids cope with the loss. Say what you want, but between TV and the Internet, parenting has become almost effortless.

Our stingray “Steve” passed on as well. He had taken to wandering about on our floor outside the aquarium. There he’d be, calmly staring at you. We’d be staring back, thinking, “You gotta plan here, Steve?” It became a fairly routine “rescue operation.” Isen would holler, “Get the spatula!” and Mishelle would casually flip him back into the tank like a hotcake.  One day, all the spatulas were in the washer…tried to use a waffle iron… unsatisfactory results.

To sum up—we are well. We hope you are too. We are looking forward to the new year and we wish you all the best.

The Padburys