I would like to do a little bragging about Sam for a minute. He has been playing flute for a couple of years now and today at his school’s spring concert, he had his first solo. He has been practicing really hard. He was having a little trouble for a while, but after we figured out that his flute needed to be adjusted—not him—it all came together.

See Sam perform In Dreams from Lord of the Rings at his concert. (Also see my finger in front of the lens.)

I’m so proud.

Wait a minute! Maybe we can achieve this perfect storm of celebration if I show you this slightly blurry photo of Gerbil Mother’s Day:

Although it probably doesn’t count if I took the photo a month ago, does it?

Mother’s Day was pretty much overshadowed by Jack’s birthday, which was totally fine with me, especially because I got the best handmade cards and gifts I could have possibly gotten. Sam made me a paper Minecraft cake and sang a song to go along with it, complete with an illustrated companion book.

Jack made me a bead necklace and a paper flower, along with a note that I had to hide from my other kids because it mentioned the secret iPad time he gets in the morning if he has good behavior at school the day before.

Quinn typed up a little note that said, “I love you and you are good. So I think you should get to sleep in 5 more minutes than you usually do. Then get dressed, come downstairs and fix us breakfast.” Then, he poked at me, said, “I regret putting my thumb in your armpit,” and ran to the bathroom to frantically wash his hands. Because I have cooties, evidently.

Also, Alex got me the best Mother’s Day card that he could possibly have given to a non-hugger autistic person like me.

I laughed and laughed. Alex gets me.

We then moved on to Jack’s big day. He opened presents and then all the males in my house played Minecraft together until I threatened to walk out of the house and go on Jack’s Big Birthday Outing all by myself because we were going to a petting farm and I wanted to pet some farm animals, thank you very much.

Also, Minecraft is stupid.

I finally bent my entire family to my will and we headed out to the farm. Where did we go, you ask? Why don’t we let Sam tell us?

He asked me to take this photo. It was the best Mother’s Day gift I could have asked for.

Wait. Where did you say you were again?

This would only be better if spoilsport Quinn had shown his face. God, I love my family.

There were all kinds of animals to pet and feed at this farm. Unfortunately, Jack was unexcited about all of them.

Wait. I mean he was SUPER excited about all of them.

We started with the fowl. My kids think chickens are really funny. Except Sam. Sam was a little bit afraid of the chickens. That’s probably a smart move seeing as how chickens are exceptionally pointy. In reality, however, chickens are probably more scared of us than we are of them.

This chicken in particular.
He was trapped in a Team Stimey-chicken sandwich—otherwise known as a chicken sandwich.

We saw every animal at the farm. We were allowed to pet all of them except for the zebras. I assume this is because every time I have seen zebras in captivity, there is a sign that warns people that fingers look like carrots* and you shouldn’t stick said fingers in zebra pens because zebras are assholes and will eat your hand.

Naturally, I asked Alex to put his finger in the zebra pen.

He’s really half assing feeding his finger to the zebra though. You can tell from the photo.

We also saw the pig race.

I felt that the race was a little demeaning, but the pigs didn’t seem to mind.

One of those pigs was galloping. The other one sort of ambled at a fast trot. Once they raced, they ate out of their little piggy bowl and the first one snorted angrily and shoved the second one every time the second one tried to eat some food. I was all, “Hey! That first one is like me!”

There were a lot of baby animals at the petting farm. There were baby birds, pigs, llamas, bison, goats, a cow, and sheep.

This baby sheep made a whiny, complainy bleat that sound EXACTLY like Quinn.

Happily, this farm made Quinn, who is often quite grumpy, happier than I have seen him in a while. It was great to see his delighted, happy face. Baby animals are kind of his thing.

The sheer awesomeness of feeding sheep knocked him on his ass.

My favorite animal there was the kangaroo. Have you ever petted a kangaroo? OMG, they are so soft. And they have little hands that they use to scratch themselves in all kinds of fun places while you watch. Plus, if you get really close to them, they will try to eat your hair. I want a kangaroo.

Specifically, this kangaroo. I will name him Bartholomew.

I also have a thing for emus, even though they are kinda dicks. Have you ever petted an emu? Of course not, because they will peck you to death before you get close enough.

Aaaaaiiiiiggghhhhh!!!!!!

Baby chickens were nicer than the emus, although I’m sure if they could have gotten away with pecking my eyes out, they would have.

I would name this lil’ guy “Nugget.”

The unruliest animals were the ones in this cage though:

I would like to state for the record, that it was not ME who locked the children in there.

Revenge for the illegal jailing was pursued.

Sam will also peck you to death.

I have to say, Alex was skeptical about our trip to the petting farm. It was, however, one of our best outings in a long time. It was outside, so we could be loud and run; there was sufficient interaction to keep everyone’s interest; and we were able to see the entire farm and touch every single animal on it in two hours, meaning no one got overwhelmed.

See? Look? Most of them look not not unhappy!

Add some focus and take away one stranglehold and this photo is super close to being almost frame-able.

And that was Jean and Jack Day in Stimeyland. Pretty good, huh? The only thing I neglected to show you is Jack’s cake. I always get my cakes from the grocery store, but this time I was nervous because my instructions to the bakery, which they wrote verbatim on the order form, were “Make it look grassy. Kind of like it’s a field.”

They actually did a great job. Although it barely mattered considering that one of Jack’s gifts was a set of some awesome Minecraft figures and some plant foam cut into cubes. Jack’s face—hell, my whole family’s faces—were priceless when they saw this cake.

I came to dig.

I hope that all of you had Mother’s Day/Jack’s Birthdays that were as good as ours was. Even though I didn’t get the traditional Mother’s Day gift of getting to avoid my family all day, it was one of the better days that I’ve had in a long, long time.

* Fingers also evidently look like rodent pellets. I say this based on the fact that I poked my finger in front of Jetpack the other day and she latched on, leaving me to yank my hand up, GERBIL STILL DANGLING FROM MY FINGER BY HER TEETH, until she finally fell off. It was quite traumatic, I tell you. The trauma was made even worse because no one was as concerned by the blood oozing out of the tiny puncture wound on the tip of my finger as I was. Fair warning: Jetpack has developed a taste for human blood. Remain vigilant.

Jack skated for two hours straight at the rink today. Two hours. With a smile on his face the entire time. (Except for about five minutes after he fell and hurt his knee. Then he had a grimace and tears on his face. But the smile came back.)

This smile.

Seriously. Jack was so happy and relaxed on the ice. He has become very at home there and with these people. In fact, he kind of barnacled himself onto the head coach for much of that two hours. (Sorry, coach.)

Does that do to your heart what it does to mine?

We are so lucky to have found this community. We love you, Cheetah Nation.

We also love our Stimeyland friends. I am exhausted and going to bed. But I wanted to post these photos so you know what you are a part of.

Thank you to everyone who donated, including friends and recent donors Joey and Andy. Thank you to everyone who donated in honor of a Cheetah who wasn’t Jack. (I know. There are others.) Thank you to those donors whom I suspect I know, but who didn’t mark down that they were donating in honor of Jack so I don’t feel right claiming you even if you actually do belong to me. (Yes. You are mine.)

The entire Cheetah Nation and I are so grateful to everyone on this list for your donations. We are also extremely grateful to the people who organized and ran the Cheetah-thon. It is a tremendous amount of work and we can’t possibly thank you enough.

Unfortunately, the answer here is that I am not sure. I have been running and I haven’t stopped running. I am fitter, I am stronger, I don’t get out of breath when I walk up stairs. My double chin is going away, I worry a lot less that someone will ask me if I’m pregnant, and I have gotten rid of all that troublesome wrist fat that holds my watch in place.

(Seriously. Why do my wrists get thinner but my ass stays chubby?)

I’m also getting faster. Last September, I was running a 14-1/2 minute mile. I’m currently running about a 13-1/4 minute mile. That is a respectable change.

So, I see progress.

But.

But.

I am still discouraged.

Lately running has been really hard for me. I don’t know why it suddenly feels like I’m running through peanut butter on half of my runs, but it does.

I am also tired of being the slowest runner around. I know that I’ve improved, but I also know my pace is even slower than what other runners consider to be reeeealllly slow. I am tired of being the slowest person on the road.

Alex has started running. I started him on Couch to 5K and I am running with him. His endurance is not high, but he runs his running intervals at, like 8-1/2 minute miles. It is incredibly demoralizing.

I know that I’d be faster and running would be easier if I weighed less, but I don’t have my diet under control yet. I have seen some recent movement on the scale, but I hate weighing myself so I don’t focus on that very much. Also, I get depressed every time I do, so there’s another reason I avoid it.

So.

I’ve been discouraged lately. I feel like I’ve been working really damn hard and I’m not seeing results like I want. I feel like my goals are so far away. I have put myself out there very publicly as working to improve my fitness and it makes me feel sad that I am not getting the results I want to put out there.

But I’m not giving up.

I may not be getting the results that I want, but I am working really damn hard to remember that I am getting results.

I run sometimes with an awesome friend of mine. I was telling her about all of this on our last run and I was telling her that I’m worried about not being awesome enough for the 11 other people on my relay race team in September. She told me about her father, who is in his 80s, who goes to the gym every day. Her story reminded me that my goal isn’t weight loss; my goal isn’t even my relay race; my goal is to be 80 and still healthy enough to go to work out every day.

That goal I am well on my way to achieving. That goal is the one that really matters.

I’ll take that.

I thought I should let you all know how things are going, because I’m sure some of you are on the same path I am on and it is hard. I want you to know you are not alone. Some of you are scared to start or have given up because it is SO damn hard. (Some of you are on this path and are kicking serious ass at it. To you I say, rock on wit’ yo’ bad self. Way to go! Also, I hate you juuuuuust a little bit.)

I want you to keep at it. I am going to keep at it.

So, yes, I am discouraged. And I am likely to stay discouraged for a little while. But that doesn’t mean I am going to stop. I will get to where I want to be. I may not be there by September. I may be the slowest person on the course at my relay and I’ll cry a little inside and put on a brave face, but I will still know that I accomplished something.

Every time I run I will know that I accomplished something—because I am out there, putting one foot in front of the other instead of sitting on the couch eating cookies. So I am optimistic. And I will remain optimistic longer than I stay discouraged.

And that is how Project Stimey is shaping up as we enter May.

*****

Thank you to my friends the Paulsons and Ardis for donating to the Cheetah-thon. Team Stimey’s donations to Jack’s Cheetah-thon now adds up to $1015 (plus our $500 matching donation). That is a lot of ice time, you guys. That is a lot of athletes that will get to play because of you. Thank you all so very, very much. I cannot tell you how much your help means to me. For anyone still interested, you can donate online and/or you can come by the Rockville Ice Rink this Saturday, the 11th from 5-7 pm to skate with the Cheetahs!

Mostly I was busy and tired and my sister was visiting. I have a whole list of things I would like to tell you about, but for today I am just going to link to a couple posts that I wrote elsewhere.

We’re all about language this week:

First off, I wrote about Jack over at White Knuckle Parenting this week and how I dealt with it when he learned the r-word.

My next link was published several days ago, but I forgot to tell you about it. I wrote about identity-first language for The Shake. There is also a sister piece written by someone else who prefers person-first language.

Lastly, I would like to thank those of you who donated to the Cheetah-thon. You are all so wonderful! Thank you to Kelly, Candi & Dick, and Susan! You all have contributed a total of $865. Thank you. Thank you so very much.

For more information about the Cheetahs and the Cheetah-thon, check out this post. To donate to the Cheetah-thon, please visit this page.

If you are available on May 11 from 5-7, please come by the Rockville Ice Arena to skate with the Cheetahs. Everyone is welcome! It should be a lot of fun!

For a lot of years we’ve emailed and messaged and texted and made inappropriate jokes about lurking in each others’ driveways and peeking in windows. We always talked about meeting someday, but it seemed unlikely that someday would ever come.

Jen came to visit me in April. She flew all the way to the DC area just to visit me. Me. I feel pretty awesome about that. I mean that’s brave of her, right? For her to put herself out there to come and visit someone she’d never met? I’m sure that says something about her, but I’m also pretty sure that means that I am the most magnetic person in the world.

Or something.

Anywho, I was thrilled. I was nervous and excited to meet her, but it didn’t feel weird to open my home to someone I’d never met because she was already my friend. We’d just never happened to, you know, meet before. I mean, sure, Alex was all, “She’s not going to kill us, is she?” and my therapist’s eyes just about popped out of his head when I told him, but for the most part it didn’t seem strange at all.

And it wasn’t. She is easy and fun and hilarious and one of the best people I’ve met. We got along immediately. Having her in my home wasn’t stressful, which is always a risk for houseguests in Stimeyland.

I mean, sure, I panicked in the airport parking lot because I couldn’t find my car and also because I couldn’t find my keys, which were actually in my hand (“I thought they were in your hand, but I didn’t want to say anything, you psycho” is a paraphrase of what Jen said when I finally located said keys by lifting my hand toward my face), but after we got in the car and I drove in 16 circles to find the exit of the garage, everything was smooth sailing.

I was extremely relieved to discover that not only is Jen even more awesome in person than she is online, but she is my people. There are just a few of those. I feel really lucky to have found another.

See? People. And the White House.

Jen and I did everything in DC while she was here. You may think I’m kidding, but I’m not. We went to every monument and memorial on the National Mall, plus four museums. And the zoo. My feet still hurt.

She also introduced me to risotto, which I have never before eaten in my life. Can you believe it? We went to Joe Squared in Baltimore, which has something like 17 kinds of risotto on the menu. After I took my first bite, I was furious at myself for never having eaten it before. Jen was in town for five days. We drove to Baltimore to eat risotto twice.

See? My people.

I could talk for a long time about Jen and how awesome she is, but most of you probably don’t want to hear all the fun little jokes we came up with over the weekend. But I would like to take you on a little photo tour of parts of her visit.

I’m going to start with my favorite photo that I took of Jen during her visit. She is a photographer and for maybe the first time in my life, I wasn’t the person who took the most photos whilst out and about. There is a lot to photograph at Arlington National Cemetery, which is where we started.

Ironically, my photo of an awesome photographer could have been WAY better framed.

From there, we headed to the White House, where we both took a lot of photos, but then we found this tree that was almost even more interesting. This tree was otter interesting. (Don’t worry. That will make sense later.)

Have you ever seen such a thing?

Okay, fine. I’ll show you the White House too.

Algernon liked Jen too.

From there, we traveled down the Mall to the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and then a looooong walk back to my car. That long walk back always sucks so much. I was smart enough the next day to suggest that we park near where we were going to end our day, which was brilliant. Weirdly though, this scheme involved a long walk to our first destination. Stupid giant National Mall. They could have crammed things a little closer for us lazy people, don’t you think?

But! The long walk was okay because we got to see some awesome sculptures like these…chairs?

I don’t “get” art.
But at least Algernon and Jen had a place to sit.

Then we found this very flamboyant pizza cutter.

Did I mention that I don’t get art?

This next piece of art entertained my brain for the remainder of the day. I’m pretty sure that Jen is going to kill me for posting this here, but I have to because OMG, WHO PUT THIS ON THE NATIONAL MALL?!

*whispers* I think this is a *quieter whisper* vagina. *knowing look*

All of this before we even set foot in a museum! We headed off to the speediest tours ever of the Natural History Museum and the American History Museum. It’s tough because you could spend an entire day in just one or two exhibits in any one of these museums, but we wanted to see a little bit of everything.

We ended up taking the teaser tour of DC. What? You want to check out the extensive and in-depth exhibit on human evolution? Sorry! Pick your favorite skull to look at because we have to go see the Star Spangled Banner!

I did manage to get a photo of Jen in the crystal ball that I always take photos through at the Natural History Museum.

You make time for important things like this.

From there, it was off to see the memorials we missed the day before.

Having lived here for a long time, I had already visited all of the places we toured in DC, except for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. I was super excited to go there. I can’t wait to take Jack there sometime. He is going to LOVE it. He absolutely loves his friend Martin, so I can only imagine his eyes if he were to see this memorial. It is gorgeous.

Right?

From there, we swung around through the Korean War Memorial and then began the long trudge back down toward the museum end of the Mall. We decided to bypass several of the museums lining the south side of the Mall because we were running short on time and also we needed to find food.

Of course, we had to traipse back down the mall, which included passing an ultimate Frisbee game and a kickball tournament to find that food. Happily, these hipster gatherings at least gave us something to make fun of on our slog down the Mall.

Fortunately I remembered that I had heard people talk about how yummy the food was at the American Indian Museum cafe, which is something that Team Stimey hadn’t experienced the other time we’d been to that museum, on a particularly ill-fated trip downtown with my children a while back.

It was a good decision to go there. (Fry bread!) Plus, because it was Jen’s birthday, it was totally legitimate for her to chug wine directly from the bottle in a museum cafe at lunchtime.

Seriously. Fry bread.

It was getting late in the afternoon, so we took a quick swing by the Capitol on our way to the National Gallery of Art. We also spent some time enjoying the pigeon hanging out on this statue’s hat.

Or at least *I* did.

We had a little over an hour at the art museum, which is totally enough time to pass judgment on all of the art hanging in the museum. I didn’t take any photos, maybe because I was having too good of a time listening to Jen complaining about the art at the museum. I will forever remember her standing in front of a Gauguin painting with a grimace on her face saying, “This is not a good painting.”

Honestly, I think she was right.

Once Jen started passing authoritative judgment on a few paintings, it was all over. I have spent every moment of every day since that moment pointing out faults in people (“This is not a good child.”), places (“This is not a good soccer field.”), and things (“This is not a good dead gerbil.”). You should try it. I think you will like it.

The museum closed at 5 (“Ladies and gentleman, the National Gallery of Art is now closed. Please make your way to the exit,” a guard bellowed loudly in a room where only he, Jen, and I stood.) and we had people meeting us at my house at 6 to go to a birthday dinner with Jen. It was 5:50 when it occurred to me that I should probably call Alex to tell him that people would be arriving on our porch and we wouldn’t be there yet. This was the first he had heard of people arriving on our porch.

(This is not a good wife.)

Alex all but hung up on me, saying (with a fair amount of resentment in his voice if I’m being honest), “I have to go clean now. Goodb—QUINN! SAM! JACK! GET IN HERE! PICK UP THIS TRASH! *click*”

Quinn almost didn’t let the first two people who arrived in, telling them, “You can’t come in. We’re cleaning.” For Jen’s and my blog-friend Susan, whom we were meeting in person for the first time, this was an abrupt welcome to Stimeyland. Fortunately, she knows what we’re like so I can’t imagine she was too taken aback. Can you imagine though? Showing up at someone’s house where you’ve never been and the person you’re going to see isn’t there yet, but there IS a surly Alex and an insolent 7-year-old telling you you’re not welcome? I probably would have gone to cry in my car.

Fortunately, things turned around quickly after Jen and I arrived and Alex forgave me/publicly shamed me in front of my friends. We had assembled an all-star cast for Jen’s birthday dinner.

Heather, Lindsay, Stimey, Jen, Susan

We had such a good time. I am in love with this group of women. We had Mexican food, margaritas, cake, and an offensive and hilarious party game. It was maybe my favorite night of the year thus far.

I’d appreciate it if you could look away from the piles of crap on my table and focus on the awesomeness of margaritas, Jen, and photos of awesome cakes.

The cake was a Minnie Mouse cake with a photo of Alex on it. It’s a long story. But worth it for the look on Jen’s face. I was pretty pleased with the cake and the writing that I forced the grocery store decorators to put on the top. Let me tell you, “Happy Birthday to my Internet Soul Sister” takes up a lot of space on a quarter of a sheet cake.

The next day we, along with half of the DC Metro area, decided to go to the zoo. Originally I had thought that this would be a fun thing to do with my kids. My kids didn’t want to go to the zoo though, so Jen and I got to go by ourselves. I have to say it was awesome and sliiiiiightly less whiny to go to the zoo with another adult.

I was pretty excited because I got to introduce Jen to a real, live panda bear.

Depressed panda is depressed.
Or asleep.

I have to tell you though, the best animals at the zoo were the Asian otters. There was a whole pack of these little guys and they were the best thing I’d ever seen. (These are good animals.) They swam. They sat on their haunches and looked at visitors. They ran in little adorable packs. Frankly, they set the bar pretty high for zoo animals that day. (Which leads me to, “Yeah, the elephant is interesting, but it’s not otter interesting.”)

DO YOU SEE? OTTER INTERESTING. (Also adorable.)

We saw lots of other animals as well. In fact, because of my poor navigation skills, we traveled the maximum uphill distance you possibly can at the zoo in order to see nearly every animal you can see at the zoo, including the invertebrates, which my kids never let me see because they are afraid of the spiders that are kept there with no barrier between them and the general public. Those spiders make an entire wing of the zoo off limits for most of Team Stimey.

One of our favorites was the hyrax, which seems to be the Debbie Downer of the animal kingdom. They are fun to anthropomorphize in the most dejected kind of way. They just look so disgruntled.

But athletic! How do you think he got up there?
The hyrax: “*sigh* Someone stuffed me up here. *grumble* I suppose I’ll just sit up here all day. *harumph*”

We also saw this monkey:

I mention him only because I like this photo.

After the zoo, we met my family for dinner. It was at that dinner that we were discussing the names that my kids want to give the kittens we are considering getting. Jack told us that he either wants to name his Steve, after a Minecraft character, or Jenny, after, well, Jen.

(This is a good name for a cat.)

I think it is safe to say that all of Team Stimey are fans of Jen. We miss her. We want her to come back. If it weren’t still snowing where she lives, we would want to go visit her right now.

I have felt lucky for a long time that Jen is my friend. Now that I have seen her in person and been able to have long conversations, I feel even luckier. Thank you for taking a chance and coming to visit, Jen. Thank you also for not killing us. We are going to be friends for a long time.

(This is a good friendship.)

*****

You all continue to bring magic by donating to the the Montgomery Cheetahs Cheetah-thon. Thank you so much for the most recent donors including an anonymous friend; Barbara; and my sister, her wife, and their family. Thank you all so much. So, so much. I love you. You all have donated $775 so far. You are amazing.

Jack and his teammates would be so grateful if you were to donate to his team. We’d also like it if you were to come out and skate with us on May 11. Details about the Cheetah-thon and how to donate are online.

This time around, bloggers are sharing some Ausome things in their lives. I know a lot of Ausome people. I feel very lucky to know a lot of Ausome people.

(I feel so lucky to know those Ausome people that I will call them Ausome even if I feel vaguely uneasy using the word “Ausome” because it isn’t a real word AND has iffy capitalization. You can take a girl off the copy editor’s desk, but you can’t take the copy editor out of the girl.)

Click that graphic up there to go to the flash blog site to read the great stuff there. If you want to read something that I wrote (even if it isn’t technically for this, but I wrote it and it’s about autism, so there), you can check out Acceptance Begins at Home, which I wrote for the Autistic Self Advocacy Network for Autism Acceptance Month.

There are a ton of great posts on the ASAN Autism Acceptance Month website, as well as a huge number of fact sheets for parents, autistics, and professionals. Spend some time poking around over there and I think you’ll find some stuff you like.

Also, if you’re looking for posts about autism awareness from the parent perspective, Lisa of Autism Wonderland put together an amazing piece at Babble featuring some wonderful posts on this very topic.

*****

Also, not for nothing, a new Costco opened in my neighborhood and now my family has nearly unlimited opportunities to buy things we don’t need in enormous quantities. I wrote about why you shouldn’t take your children to such a place for White Knuckle Parenting. (Although I totally take my kids there all the time.)

*****

AHEM. CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? YOU ARE AWESOME.

Yesterday I asked for your help with the Montgomery Cheetah’s upcoming Cheetah-thon fundraiser. In addition to the wonderful people who had already donated, even more of you stepped up and chipped in. We’re already over the $500 that Alex and I are going to match.

I cannot thank you all enough.

But I’ll try. Thank you to Lisa, Meredith, Gayle, Jen, Diane, Cheryl, Bec, the Martinez family, the Pedulla family, and the Coppenrath Girls. YOU MAKE MY HEART SING.

Our new Team Stimey Cheetah-thon total is $720. That doesn’t even include our matching funds. I can’t even tell you all how much that means to me. If you haven’t donated yet and would like to, you can do so on the Cheetahs’ FirstGiving site. Be sure to mention if you’re donating for Jack so I can send air kisses your way. Because that is what I am doing right now.

All of that is pretty Ausome, huh?

Jack is the one with the arrow pointing at him. (Wouldn’t it be funny if I had the arrow pointing at some random kid?)

I took that photo above at Jack’s last practice of the season, which took place a little over a week ago. Jack has been skating with the Cheetahs for three years, and three years I have known that this is one of the most incredible things I have ever been involved in.

There are dozens of athletes that play on this team. There are dozens of mostly high school-aged mentors who help those players learn hockey skills. Those dozens of mentors have parents who drive them to early morning practices every Saturday and who plan our Cheetah-thon as part of Bar Mitzvah projects. There are dozens of family members of Cheetahs who watch their children and brothers and sisters with pride in their hearts as they see just how incredibly capable these athletes are. There is a whole team of coaches and volunteers who plan drills, coordinate ice time, organize the mentors, plan tournaments, and skate with the players.

I’ve said it before: Special hockey matters. There is magic in special hockey.

The Cheetahs have a direct day-to-day impact on all of those people that I mentioned above. Jack has made so many friends through the Cheetahs. He’s become stronger physically and he’s become braver mentally. He gets to be a part of something. That is huge.

Then there is the ripple effect. All of these players, mentors, and families reach other people, talk to other people, let them know how amazing these Cheetahs are—not just on the ice, but as people. The magic of special hockey spreads. The message that these young people—typical and with disabilities—and what they do, what they ARE, matter.

If you are local, please consider joining us on May 11 from 5-7 pm at the Rockville Ice Arena for our Cheetah-thon. Hang out, participate in our raffles, and if the spirit moves you, get on the ice with our wonderful players and mentors. Team Stimey will be there and we would love to see you!

If you can’t come in person, I would be so grateful if you could donate to the Cheetahs. This money goes toward ice time, tournament expenses for players who otherwise couldn’t go, and other expenses that directly help these players. The Cheetahs are an all-volunteer organization so you can feel comfortable knowing that all of your money will go directly to the players. It’s tax deductible too!

You can donate on the Cheetahs’ fundraising page or by mailing a check to the address listed there. Be sure to mention Jack if you are donating in his honor so I can thank you. Also, Team Stimey will be matching donations made in Jack’s name up to $500 total. Your $5 donation will become $10! Your $50 donation will become $100! Your $1000 donation will become…well, $1500. Anything helps. And anything is appreciated—not just by me but by the entire Cheetah Nation.

My medium-sized champion appreciates it too.

Thank you so much to all the wonderful people who have already donated to the Cheetah-thon. Mir, Michal, Laura, Stacy, and my mom and stepdad, you are making magic. Thank you.

Team Stimey’s Cheetah-thon total thus far: $300. Wow. You guys are awesome. See? Magic.

Wait, what? Me?

You did not disappoint.

It almost—ALMOST—makes me wish I had 40 or 50 more gerbils for all of you to name. If any of you are trying to name a pet, please check out the comments on that post, because not only will you laugh hysterically, you will also get many, many good ideas.

I’ll just wait here and chew on this while you do that.

You can see how difficult this decision was for me. But a decision had to be made, so I buckled down and laughed my way through the list several times only to notice that I kept coming back to Lisa’s suggestion for Edwina Scissorpaws. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I did not, however, care for Edwina. But then my friend Jen, who was in town visiting me for the weekend, suggested Edie Scissorpaws.

SOLD!

Call her Edie, call her Scissorpaws, just don’t call her after midnight.

Meet Ms. Edie Scissorpaws. She will cut a bitch.

Thank you all for your suggestions! You make my funny bone happy. And a huge thanks to Lisa and Jen for making Edie’s funny bone happy.

*****

Jack had an IEP meeting yesterday afternoon and it was smooth and easy and I don’t think we were pushed around by the system. After putting in a lot of years at IEP meetings where, even though his team was amazing, I walked out with a clenched jaw from the stress, it was lovely to spend a pretty relaxed hour saying nice things about my kid and his teachers. I reflected on this over at White Knuckle Parenting: Doing Time at the IEP Meeting.

This gerbil.

Right now this adorable little gerbil, who I am, oh, let’s say 92 percent sure is a girl, doesn’t have a name. (She also doesn’t have a manicurist, but I’m hoping that she develops a nail chewing habit to shorten her vaguely terrifying claws.)

Right now this adorable little girl only answers to She Who Shall Not Be Named, and that is, frankly, a little bit cumbersome for such a tiny girl.

This is where you come in. I need name ideas. Naturally, you should understand that I might disregard everything you all say and end up naming her Hippo or something. I do at least want to know that I’ve explored my options. Before you offer me suggestions, however, I feel like you should have the whole picture.

The whole picture starts with this picture:

Remember this?

She’s a lot cuter now, right?

I do think you need to know the names of the other gerbils so you don’t name this one something like Tyler when I’ve named the other James, Jordan, Jenny, and Jimi. This will also serve as something of a coming out party for the gerbils. You are welcome to send them debutante gifts if you deem it appropriate. Perhaps small, lacy hats?

This little guy is Creeper:

Quinn named this one.

You should be aware that most of these animals are named after Minecraft characters.

This next one is the other boy. He is King:

Sam named him. I don’t feel that he gave the naming exercise his best effort, but now we’re stuck with King. I would have named him Spider Whiskers.

I moved King and Creeper over to BoyTown yesterday. Mouse seems to have accepted them into his home, which I was a little worried about. I found them all sleeping today in a big ol’ boy pile—or they were mating and getting ready to have 1800 new babies. One of the two.

The reason I’m naming the gerblets now is because before they were separated, it was impossible to tell some of them apart. Fortunately it didn’t turn out that all the white ones were girls and the brown ones boys because that would have been a huge problem for me.

Okay, on to the girls.

Since the gerblets were born, Jack has insisted that one of them be named Jeffery. Jeffery comes from Minecraft. Today I asked him who Jeffery is and Jack said, “a pig,” and I just nodded and moved on because Minecraft? I do not understand you.

Well, I did my math wrong and by the time I got around to double checking with Jack that he really wanted to name his gerbil Jeffery, I was plumb out of boys. Fortunately, Jack can be flexible.

Meet Jefferie.

Last but not least, you know Spike, sometimes known as Spike the Badass and sometimes known as Spike the Wonder Gerbil. I remember back when I worried that she wasn’t going to live very long. Turns out that she is hanging in there like a rock star and is totally working her little misshapen hand.

I like that she always looks like she’s waving at me.

Spike is definitely the runt, which I’m sure has to do with her paw. She was smaller than everyone else and it took her longer to grow fur and to open her eyes, but now she seems to have totally adapted, having figured out how to hold her food and scamper around with a semi-functional limb.

The others love her as much as I do too. Take for example Jefferie kissing Spike:

Spike is all, “Get the fuck offa me, will ya?”

Which brings us back to She Who Shall Not Be Named. We must name her.

Help me! I don’t want to be named Hippo!

I’m ready. Give me your best suggestions. Bring the lunacy.