Jen's Column / Body Bowling

Goodness. I haven't been very good at this lately, have I? I've been deep in the trenches of graduate school applications, and am just now digging out.

I tell you, yesterday was an adventure. Our living room was filled with piles and piles (and piles) of applications, writing samples, critical essays, and personal statements. After six hours of proofing, reprinting, sorting, stacking, signing and binding, I finally corralled them into envelopes. In fact, as soon as I finish this post, I'm off to the post office. What a relief!

I'll let you know how it goes -- whether I'm accepted to one of the three schools to which I applied, or if I'll be starting this process over again in the fall!

In the meantime.... here's the column that ran this week. Enjoy! :)

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I'd been waiting for last weekend all winter. The conditions were finally right — not too warm, not too cold — for the annual bowl-a-thon on our backyard ice rink.

My husband, Jay, had prepped the pins — frozen soda bottles — earlier in the week. All we needed was something to throw at them. Last year we used chickens. Frozen, organic, free-range chickens to be exact. Our neighbor George brought them.

But this year George was out of town and there were no whole chickens — organic or otherwise — in my freezer. Frozen chickens, with their pale, dimpled skin and necks in a bag, gross me out. We'd have to find something else.

I looked in our freezer. We had a bag of French fries, a box of frozen waffles and a few hockey pizzas. We had a few sandwich bags filled with frozen walleye filets.
Jay wondered why we didn't just use a ball.

"Because we're Minnesotans!" I cried. "Because we're being fun and quirky!"

He sighed and headed to the chest freezer in the garage. A few minutes later, he returned carrying a bag of "Aussie Chicken" that I made at Dish It Up last month. (I can't tell you exactly what's in it, but I do remember the ingredients include bacon and cheese so it's obviously a winner.)

"Do you think this will work?" he asked.

"Perfect!" I answered. But I was wrong. Once outside, we realized that no amount of bacon and cheese was going to help Aussie Chicken get the speed we required. We dug out a soccer ball. So much for quirky.

The game was on, but it was hard to keep up with the rules. The kids kept changing them. "You get two rolls" turned into "You get three rolls" turned into "If you don't hit the pins after five rolls, you still get one point."

I'm not sure who won. We were all distracted with other activities by the end of the game. Jay was smoothing rough spots in the ice. I was lying on my back blowing "smoke" (winter breath) rings into the sky. Bergen was using his body to topple the pins.

It gave me an idea: "Hey!" I yelled to my boys. "Let's body bowl! You guys be the pins and I'll be the ball!"

They agreed heartily, of course — standing on their knees while, after a running start, I fell to the ground and slid their way. At age eight, Christian wasn't so much toppled as bumped. And five-year-old Bergen kept scooting hurriedly out of the way before I could reach him. Apparently seeing his mom hurl her body at him in an attempt to push him over freaked him out. Who knew?

We changed tactics. My sons would be the balls; I would be the lone pin in a game that quickly became full-contact tackle bowling.

I stood on my knees and watched my children running straight at me — their speed picking up with every step. "Slide!" I yelled the closer they came. "You're supposed to kneel and slide!"

This last part was said with my face flat against the ice as Bergen lay on my head. Christian tackled the rest of my flailing body.

But I'm no quitter. "OK," I said, removing myself from the wreckage. "Let's try that again."

The scene replayed itself until we were finally kicked off the ice by the "Zamboni" (my husband with the garden hose). I hobbled for the house.

"Can we play again tomorrow?" my sons asked, their rosy cheeks bounding across the yard behind me.

"I think we're going to be playing a new game tomorrow," I answered. "It's called, 'Let's count Mommy's bruises.'"

Jen's column / Laptop

Akeelah & the Bee has been stuck in my computer’s CD/DVD drive since last May.

Have you seen this movie? It’s actually an extraordinary film. One of my favorites, in fact.

Still.

Even the best movie in the world can only be watched so many times. And this movie has been stuck in my laptop for three Minnesota seasons now. I put it in one afternoon during a marathon drive to northern Minnesota (no, I wasn’t driving) and when we got to our destination, it wouldn’t come out. It just made a scary noise. In fact, it still makes that noise sometimes — even though I've long since given up trying to eject the disk.

Back in May, I called the only person I could find in Rochester who fixes Macintosh computers. He seemed like a nice guy.

"Akeelah & the Bee won’t come out," I told him.

"You probably need a new drive," Nice Mac Guy said. "I can replace it for you."

"How long would that take?" I asked, wary.

"A few days," he answered.

"A few?"

"Five, tops," he replied with no hint of apology.

There are many things wrong with this conversation — not the least of which is the fact that my heart started beating faster and my throat got so dry that I had to cough. The thought of relinquishing my computer for more than six hours at a time is unfathomable to me.

And, yes, I'm well aware I have a problem. But I can’t imagine how my life would function for five days without my laptop. How would I research stories? Contact editors? Meet deadlines? How would I get my People.com entertainment news fix?

This is what I was thinking. But to Nice Mac Guy, I said, "Five days. Hmm. I'll get back to you."

It's been 10 months.

It's not like I've been sitting idle since then. I took my laptop to the Apple Store at the Mall of America on my way to a meeting in November. The resident "Apple Genius" — who wore funky glasses and had one of those faux Mohawks — carried it into the back room where I imagined he whacked it with a stick a few times and tore at it with needle nose pliers. (Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind to do that myself, mind you.)

Then he came back and told me he was sorry. No luck.

"What’s stuck in there, anyway?" he asked.

"Akeelah & the Bee," I sighed — then added, "At least it’s not porn!"

He looked at me quizzically.

"Not that I watch porn," I explained, quickly. "I don't. Clearly. It’s just, you know, it would be really horrible if I had something like porn stuck in there and someone else had to take it out."

"Porn?" He said, trying to catch up.

"That would be," I fumbled, "embarrassing."

We looked at each other in silence for a beat.

"So you can’t fix it, huh?" I asked.

"Well, if you left it here for a few days, we could replace the drive and get it back to you."

"That’s OK," I said, grabbing my laptop defensively. "Akeelah’s actually a really good movie…."

Someday I’ll get it fixed. Someday I'll need to install new software, burn a CD with my kids’ pictures or — imagine! — back-up my files. And I’ll call Nice Mac Guy and get a new drive. And I’ll go five days with no computer.

Or maybe not. Akeelah’s a good movie. It wouldn’t kill me to watch her a few dozen more times.

Super Tuesday!

So excited to do the caucus thing today! It's my first time -- I guess that would make me a caucus virgin -- and I can't wait to go in and give Barack a big, wet kiss! xo, Jen