Christian's Favorite Things

Well, this week marks another Rochester-focused column. (It's about the National Wear Red Day heart walk on February 1. You're welcome to join in...) So in its place here, I'm giving you Christian's Favorite Things.

He's sitting right next to me, reading as I type... so you can be sure I'm quoting him verbatim. :)

Christian, what is your favorite:

Food? Domino's Pizza
Drink? Orange soda
Color? Orange
Thing to do on a Saturday? Play the Wii
Sport? Hockey
Subject in school? P.E. and recess
Number? 25 (Why?) Because I like 25 and because 25 cents is a quarter
Dessert? Ah, that's hard -- really hard. Domino's Pizza
Song? Before He Cheats
Place to travel? Arizona
Class to take outside of school? Baseball
Book? Geronimo Stilton chapter books
Movie? Cheaper by the Dozen, and The Pacifier
Thing to play outside? Snowball fights when it's cold
Thing about your Mommy (wink, wink): She let's me play the Wii
Candy? (Christian requested this question): Those big bunny chocolates

If you could give yourself a message for when you're a grown-up, what would you tell yourself? Wow, I'm handsome!

Is there anything I should add? Sure. Hello, everybody!

Bergen's Favorite Things

This week's column is Rochester-centric, so I'll spare you. (Though, if you're interested in reading about the Olmsted County Child Foster Care program, you can check out Wednesday's Jen's World at www.postbulletin.com.)

In its place, I'm giving you "Bergen's Favorite Things." I give this quiz to the kids periodically, and then record their answers verbatim in a notebook that I'll give them when they're older. Some of the questions change, but what follows is the basic rundown. (The words in parenthesis are mine, explaining his more cryptic answers for you.)

Question: Bergen, what is your favorite...

Food? Pizza
Drink? Lemonade
Book? It's not actually a book. It's a newspaper and it's called Mama's column.
Song? The baby one, but it's not a baby song –- it's a kid. ("Hush, Little Baby")
Color? Blue
Word? Mommy
Superhero? Bounty hunter (from Star Wars)
Dessert? Ice cream. Chocolate.
Number? 10
Sport to play? Foosball (cute -- he's played once, at the gym, this weekend)
Movie? The real person bounty hunter movie (Star Wars)
Teacher? Mrs. V
Word to read? Mommy
Thing to build with Legos? Bounty hunter
Thing to do on a Saturday? Play the Wii
Place to go on a trip? Arizona
Board game? Clue
Season? Summer
Thing to do at school? Playing outside

What do you want to be when you grow up? The bounty hunter

Do you have a message you'd like to give yourself for when you're a grown-up? I'm going to change my name when I'm a grown up. Can I change my name when I'm a teenager? Bennett.

Why do you want the name Bennett? It's kind of cool.

* * *

We'll do Christian's favorite things soon. He and Jay were at hockey practice when Bergen and I did this last night. I thought about doing it now, while I'm posting, but the boys are playing in their "secret hideout" under the stairs and I hate to ruin their fun.

Hope you're all keeping warm! Four degrees here today. Yikes! :), Jen

Jen's Column / Life List

It's halfway through January and I haven't made any New Year's resolutions.

This is quite unlike me. I usually take a few contemplative minutes on New Year's Day to ink a list of the habits I'd like to change — or add — to my life in the next 365 days.

Here's the thing, though: My resolutions? They don't really vary year to year. There's the stuff I resolve to do more of — like listening, laughing, and eating my vegetables. And there's the stuff I resolve to do less of — like stressing out, stalling, and eating so much junk.

So this year I've decided to try something a little different. Instead of focusing on the things I'd like to change (things that, let's face it, I'm probably not going to change anyway), I'm going to tackle the list of things I want to accomplish.

My list — which has been taped to the wall next to my bed for the last three years — is officially titled, "Jen's List of Things to Do While I'm Able."

Ideally, I'd like to have 50 goals on that list — because, well, 50 just seems like a good number — but so far I only have 28. I'll get there. It's not like I don't have enough to keep me busy in the meantime.

After all, some of my goals are going to take some doing — such as No. 4 ("Roadtrip across America"), No. 25 ("Learn American Sign Language") and No. 6 ("Complete a triathlon").

Luckily, others are attainable with just a little effort — such as No. 9 ("Eat an entire meal made entirely out of food I've grown"), No. 13 ("Bake a loaf of bread from scratch") and No. 16 ("Read a book on Greek mythology").

So far, I've only crossed off five of my Things to Do — including "Run a 5K" and "Dye some or all of my hair blue." And I kind of cheated on this last one. My hairdresser told me that dyed blue hair looks pretty crumby after about a week, so I got six synthetic blue hair extensions instead. They were good fun and all, but they all fell out within six weeks.

It's been more than a year since I've crossed anything off my list. So this year, I've vowed to meet at least five of my life goals.

First, I want to cross off No. 10: "Sled Bemis Hill." Bemis Hill is a pee-your-pants scary sledding hill in northern Minnesota. I've been to Bemis twice — once in high school, once in college — and both times I refused to go down. This year, mark my words, I'm going to get a spine and sled that hill.

I also want to get started on No. 17: "Get my master's degree." This is one of those things that I've intended to do for nearly a decade — before babies (and then toddlers, and then preschoolers) took over my world. And, hey, I was happy to let them take over. But with two school-agers living in my house now, I'm all out of excuses.

This year, I'll run that half-marathon. I'll watch the sunrise from a canoe. Maybe I'll even get around to baking that loaf of bread from scratch.

This year, I will spend more time thinking about what I want out of my life — and write it down. I will get my "Things to Do While I'm Able" list all the way up to 50. I want to make sure I have plenty of new options come 2009.

Jen's column / Fishing

Here's this week's column on Jay's annual ice-fishing trip. There's so much more to the story than what my paltry P-B word count allows. For starters, I didn't have enough room to mention that Dave and Jay buried Dave's truck in the snow during their first trip out to the lake. Instead of digging it out, they unloaded Dave's three-wheeler (yes, THREE-wheeler) and hit the icehouse -- leaving the truck behind in the snow until they were done fishing. Can you just see them? "Ah, it'll be alright here. Let's unload the wheeler and go fishing!"

Here's the rest of the story...

* * *
It's ice fishing season again. My husband is on his annual trek to Bemidji to "chase some eyes" with his buddy Dave. That's code for "catch some walleye," by the way. I don't expect you to be up on the lingo.

True to history, Jay started piling his fishing equipment on the art room table a good week before he left. (Which is fine with me, because we haven't actually used the art room table in months. No matter how many little baskets of felt and glitter I stock in that space, craft projects always end up on — and often glued to — our kitchen table.)

So there it all was, piled high in the art room: The rods, and reels, the tackle. The subzero socks, the long underwear, the Carhartts. The cameras, the fish finders, the GPS. The package of 50 freezer bags — and the giant cooler they'd be returning home in, full of filets, when the trip was done.

On the top of the stack was the big white binder that proves, truly, how crazed my husband has become. Wrapped in its protective sleeves are topographic maps of "lakes of interest." The form he'll need when it's time to register his record-sized fish. Step-by-step instructions for pickling northerns.

It's safe to say the fishing bug has hit hard. If I needed further proof, I'd just look next to my bed, which is where Jay's new trolling motor (a 36/36, I'm told) is being stored. He doesn't want to leave it outside, lest it get cold.

I've gotten a few phone calls from the icehouse this week.

"I got the first walleye!" was the first message, left just hours after his Bemidji arrival.

The next day's message was a little less enthusiastic. "I got the smallest walleye of my life," he reported. "It's the size of my thumb."

Things went downhill from there. "Lake Bemidji was a dead sea today," he told me the next day. "We only brought back one perch. But we're not giving up. Tomorrow we're going mobile. We're going to hike to a prime lake. Guaranteed fish. Crappies the size of hubcaps."

I called him on the ice the next afternoon. "Any giant crappies jumping through the hole at you?" I asked.

"This is the worst fishing trip of my life," Jay answered, clearly defeated. He told me how he and Dave dragged their gear through more than a mile of thick, trail-less woods — and how their sleds tipped every 12 yards, repeatedly dumping rods and tackle and buckets of gear. How it was pitch black when they started out — and how the only lantern they had fell and broke. How the forest was littered with wolf tracks as big as grapefruits and how they kept stepping in fresh streaks of wolf urine. How they'd been on the lake for seven hours… and had only 6 northerns to show for it.

"I've never worked so hard for fish in my whole life," Jay said at the end of his tale.

There was a slight pause, when I was expected to say something encouraging and bright. Instead, I said, "You realize I'm going to write about this, don't you?"

He paused just long enough so that I thought he was going to veto the idea.

But then he said, "I can give you incredibly detailed details if you want. In fact, the last time you wrote about my Vexilar, I was a little hurt that you didn't mention the model number. You want to know what it is? FL-8SE."

Thanks, honey. This time I got it.

Jay's Birthday!

Today is Jay's 37th Birthday!!

To celebrate, he's leaving tomorrow for a fishing trip in Bemidji. He's so excited, he's been packing for more than a week!

Send your birthday wishes to koskifamily@charter.net!

Jen's column / New Year!

Welcome to the New Year — and to Year No. 3 of Jen's World. That's right: This week marks my two-year anniversary of hanging out with you on Wednesday afternoons.

That's what writing Jen's World feels like, I have to tell you. Putting together this column is like chatting up a good friend over coffee every week. (Except that I don't actually drink coffee. I'm more of a cranberry juice girl. But you know what I mean.)

The greatest surprise of this whole adventure has been that our conversation isn’t one-sided. It may be my words on the bottom of 1B each week, but you're sharing your stories and experiences, too. You let me know when you agree with me — and when you decidedly disagree. You make me think and, sometimes, you even make me laugh out loud.

When I sent my youngest son off to kindergarten, you were there with encouragement and stories about how you survived the transition. And, yes, you delivered some warnings, too. ("Two weeks ago we delivered our fourth and last [child] to college," one reader wrote. "Get ready, that day is much worse than sending them off to kindergarten!")

When I wrote about my aging grandfather, you shared memories of your grandparents. When I told you my "running out of gas" stories — not once, but twice — this year, you wrote to tell me to keep my tank above the half-way mark already.

I loved the online reader comments for my November column about kids' reactions to the Iraqi war. "These are more insightful comments than I've heard in any of the debates," wrote one reader. "Seems like the age limit to be in office should be lowered to 4 and be no higher than 10," wrote another. That's just funny.

I'm not sure I've ever gotten as much feedback as I did when I wrote the "zit column" in September. That's when I met my zit double — a reader named Angie — who felt the pain of my matching chin zits because she had them, too. We got together at Whistle Binkies to commiserate — but ended up talking and laughing for two hours straight instead.

And then there was the man at the Golden Generations show this year who made my day by stopping by the Post-Bulletin booth just to give me a hug. How nice is that? (Incidentally, that's the same day another man stopped by just to say, "You know you're nuts, right?" I think it was a compliment.)

It's not all laughter and hugs, of course. Sometimes you don't like what I write — and you let me know. I’m actually proud of how you handle your ire, though. You are, almost exclusively, respectful even when your opinion differs.

There was the April column in which I asked shoppers to give parents of tantrumming toddlers a break. For the most part, readers responded with big, fat thank-yous. But there were a couple of people who thought I was, and I quote, "way, way off base."

But that is nothing compared to when I wrote about chicken bowling on our backyard ice rink last January and one woman was so offended that she threatened to cancel her subscription.

For the rest of you, thank you for still reading me. Thank you for being interesting and fun and kind. But most of all, thank you for being a friend — for hanging out at my kitchen table and talking to me over coffee (or cranberry juice). I couldn't be having any more fun.

More cute kid stuff

I almost forgot to tell you two things Christian and Bergen said yesterday that made me laugh.

Story #1: I made a raw veggie pizza for dinner. My kids are pretty good onion eaters when the onions are cooked, but they aren't fans of raw onions -- so I left them off. So we're talking about the fact that Mommy didn't put onions on the pizza, and Bergen says, "Because kids don't like onions."

I said, "Well, some kids probably do..." And Bergen comes back with, "I sure don't want to meet that guy!"


Story #2: The boys and I were talking about our goals for 2008. I was writing them down on lists for each of us so we can cross them off as we meet them.

I told the boys that one of my goals was, "Take the kids to the ocean." Christian said, in all earnestness, "Which kids?"

The Best Books Store

I have to tell you a cute story. Christian and Bergen were playing in their "secret hideout" (the storage room under the stairs) for quite awhile this morning. When they came out, Christian told me what they'd been doing: "We made up a store," he said, excitedly. "It's called Best Book and we even have a mascot. It's a little book with eyes and arms and legs."

They were making books and bookmarks to sell.

OK, so another half an hour goes by. Christian comes upstairs to where I was doing dishes. He was looking for bookmarks.

"How's the store going?" I asked.

"It's good," he answered. "Bergen retired."

"Bergen retired? Did he get bored with it?"

"No, he thought he didn't get paid enough," said Christian. "I paid him a dollar and six cents, but he didn't think that was enough."

Funny. I love my kids.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2008! We wish you all a fabulous year.

We had a great little family party last night. We made lots o' food, danced on the coffee table (to Brickhouse, Tainted Love and Mambo No. 5), and watched movies as we rang in the New Year. The kids both made it to midnight -- and threw multi-colored confetti all over the living room when the ball dropped at Times Square. Our friends Lisa and Mike and their children Karli and Lauren stopped by for awhile. It couldn't have been a better night. :)

During dinner last night, we talked about our goals for 2008. Christian said he wanted to "count to 2008." Bergen just wants to play more games. Jay wants to get more fishing in, and my hope is to get accepted into a graduate program in creative writing.

We've already started working toward these goals! So far, we've counted to 110 on our quest for 2008. Bergen's on his way to the game closet as I write this. Jay's spent the last week packing for his upcoming ice fishing trip; he leaves Thursday morning. I've been working on my grad school application materials for what feels like months. I'm sending my first round of applications in March. I'll let you know how it goes!

Alright, it looks like I'm being challenged to a hot game of Sorry! I get to be green. Wish me luck... :), Jen