electric mist

when in doubt, throw hard candy (aka, The Santa from Hell)

(I've been asked, as a Christmas tradition, to re-post this story.)

When the kids were little -- I think Jake was three and Luke was seven -- Christmas felt like it was going to be slim. Make that downright anorexic. So I was looking for a way to bring a little fun into the season, something that wouldn't cost much.

I had a brilliant idea. (I should come with a warning label: If brilliant idea occurs, step way-the-hell back for your own safety.)

Anyway. The idea was to have someone play Santa at our house for a pre-Christmas visit. We'd invite all the neighbor kids and their parents and each family would bring a gift for their child ahead of time. I'd hide the gifts away and squirrel them to our Santa, who would come in the house with lots of Ho Ho Hos and joy and jovial warmth and after regaling the kids with whatever it is Santas regale kids with, he'd give out the presents. There would be hot chocolate and apple cider, a beautifully lit Christmas tree in the background. Maybe even singing, if the kids wanted to sing. We woud be so sappy, Hallmark would sue. Or throw up, but whatever, it was going to be great.

When I write it out like that, it sounds like a very nice day, doesn't it? It really does seem normal and sane and I should have known that in my world, "normal" and "sane" do not apply.

It progressed innocently enough... I invited all of the neighbors, who loved the idea, especially since it was a fairly tight season for everyone. The "gifts" to the kids were held to a very low budget, so everything was fair and equal. There was a tree, decorations, lights, apple cider and hot chocolate, brownies, cookies, you name it for a sugar fix, someone was going to bring it. All I needed was a Santa.

Finding someone with a Santa suit wasn't quite as easy as I had expected; most of the people who have them are booked for all of December, and it was two weeks before Christmas and looking a little bleak. And forget getting one of those guys for free. Like I was crazy for thinking this was the season of giving or something. Of course, the kids already knew that Santa was going to come to our house for our party, the specific date was set, so there was no going back at that point. (Could you look a bunch of 3 to 7 year olds in the face and tell them Santa wasn't showing up? If so, here's your application to Mercenaries-R-Us and Osama's on line two.) So. Had to find a Santa. Was getting a little scared as the day approached and there was no Santa to be had.

Then a member of our family, who we still speak to even after this event, suggested a certain older friend-of-the-family. I had met this FOtF several times, and he's a little... erm... warped. He is very very sweet, but also sort of odd, disjointed, but in a quasi-live-in-a-fog sort of way. Jovial, though, he had down pat. He had the rotund belly, the jolly round cheeks, the perfect Santa nose. The thing that worried me was that he was incredibly bashful. And when he did speak, he was extremely quiet. I couldn't remember him putting together two whole sentences in a row, unless you call smiling and nodding a lot "sentences," but at this point, I figured, what could it hurt?

Now, in retrospect, I understand why the heroine always goes down into the dark basement when she's heard a noise, there's a serial killer known to be in her neighborhood, someone who'd been stalking her and had keys made to her house, and yet she goes anyway, armed with only a pony-tail clasp and Malibu Barbie lipstick. She was thinking what could it hurt?

Our house was tiny, so the plan was for me to hide the bag of toys at our back door for Santa to grab, then he'd go around and come in the front door, where everyone was gathered in the living / dining room area. Tree lit? Check. Apple cider? Check. Hot chocolate? Check. Sugar high toddlers on the ceiling? Check. So many people packed in there, we were going to need pregnancy tests soon? Check.

But no Santa.

An hour goes by. The kids get higher and rowdier and the adults get fidgety and gossipy and God only knows how many families we managed to break up on that one night. Meanwhile, Jake (three) wandered off to the kitchen. I could see him (very very tiny house) from the dining room, when we heard a noise outside. A distinctive 'HO HO HO" noise. At last.

Everyone turned expectantly toward the front door. I don't want Jake to miss this, so I run into the kitchen to scoop him up, when suddenly, the back door BURST open with Jake not a foot away from it, and in bound Santa, HO HO HOing at the TOP OF HIS LUNGS, and RUNNING, people. RUNNING. There was NO ROOM TO RUN so Jake turned away from this screaming giant red monster and beelined it back to the living room, which meant he went OVER me, over a few other people standing in the way and did Santa stop? No, no he did not. Santa ran smack over me, over a few other innocent bystanders, and to top it off, the whole running time? He was throwring candy. Hard candy. And I don't mean "lightly tossing it to the cute little four-year-old standing there with her jaw open in abject fear...." No. I mean hurling it, 95mph over the plate there, Babe, pinging parents, knocking out a couple of random elementary kids and everyone started dodging and diving for cover and did he STOP? No. No he did not. He kept whizzing that candy and HO HO HOing and running (now in circles in the living room) and kids were screaming, Jake was crying, Luke was hiding, I was still on the floor in total shock, and when he did stop, finally (I think Carl tripped him), he started with the presents. Not a single jolly word did this man speak. He pulled out presents, asked the kid's name, and the really smart kids hid behind their parents, because he HURLED the gifts at their heads. Hurled. I'm not kidding you.

By this point, there was hot chocolate and apple cider everywhere, there were a couple of wet spots on the sofa I didn't want to identify, most of the kids were wailing and trying to climb their nearest parent and on top of everything else, Santa had managed to drop one of the kid's presents outside... though I had the presence of mind to realize what had happened and I had a stand-by gift ready (in case one of the parents forgot) and so that was solved. When he finished slinging the last present, did he SIT DOWN and calmly tell lovely stories to the kids to keep them from growing up to be SERIAL KILLERS?

No. No he did not.

He started up again with the running and HO HO HOing and throwing even MORE CANDY. You'd think the man was on a float and we were thirty feet away, and when he finally finished careening over a couple of kids who hadn't been trampled on the first go-round, he sprinted to the back door and ran out into the night.

The back door slammed and the whole house hushed for a moment in stunned silence. Parents looked at me like I should be locked up, and those were the nice polite expressions, comparitively speaking. Then the shrieking began, and the confusion (toys had been dropped and stomped on by Santa on his way out) and there was just no way to rescue it. I've never seen a bunch of people leave a party faster in my life.

But I tell you what. Whenever someone would say to those kids, even years later, that they "better be good because Santa was watching"... man, they'd straighten right the hell up. And I don't think a single one of them touched hard candy for years.

(Just to wrap up... I thought the Santa would have realized how badly things had gone, but the next time we saw him and his wife, he was back in bashful, quiet mode and his wife told us that he'd reportedly had an aboslutely delightful time, that it had been one of the best Santa/parties he'd ever attended. And he sat there and smiled and nodded.)

strange connections

I mostly remember the cold, some twenty-two years ago, living in a drafty house that we never should have bought, but with stars in our eyes and assumptions that we could repair the drab fixer-upper, we'd bought it anyway. And suddenly there had been a baby, all too fast, not enough time to get the thousand and one things done that we thought we'd get done before he arrived, and there was the cold. That winter seemed especially chilled, moreso I think because it always felt damp, rain and dreary gray overcasting the day until I wanted to weep for sunshine. I remember thinking that I would never get to sleep again, never get to feel that lush luxury of sheets and comforters and wallowing into oblivion because I was always half-listening for the baby's cries, the cries that always came, the cries that never stopped, and I wondered, sometimes, if I hadn't already gone quietly mad and was too deaf from the crying to hear anyone say so. I remember not knowing what to do for all of the crying, trying a thousand different things, everything anyone reasonably rational suggested and even a few of the odd ones, too, just wanting to know that I wasn't going to destroy this kid, this amazing pink and screaming child who somehow had shown up in this world with me as his mom. The gray of the days crushed in on me, moved into the house, took up all of the room, squeezed me into a corner until I couldn't breathe without breathing in the gray and I felt the color leeching out of my world, felt myself going blank for hours at a time, just trying to muddle through, just trying to breathe in and out without soaking up the gray, and whole eons seemed to pass without my moving. And I remember this moment, this clear moment when the gray felt a little less severe, and I looked out the window and felt the air shimmer, sunshine filtered through the clouds, but that's not what took my breath away. What did was an amazing sight of a dozen Japanese Magnolia trees that had been planted some thirty years earlier on the border of our property, and they had all burst forth with bloom, seemingly overnight. Vibrant pinks that crimsoned into lush wines on one side of the velvety petals, creamy white skimming the other, and thousands of blooms, filling the sky. We hadn't known what kind of tree that was when we'd moved in; no one had guessed Japanese Magnolias because traditionally, those trees aren't that large, but these were at least forty to fifty feet in height and there was a wall of flowers reaching toward the shimmering air. The color leeched back into my world and that image anchored me, reminded me of beauty, reminded me that there were going to be days of colors, of riots of greens and blue skies and sunshine. And for the first time, I felt less afraid of the screaming child and what I was going to do and how I might handle the tasks we had before us.

In this house where we've lived for six years, I made sure that the one tree I planted as soon as I had the chance was a Japanese Magnolia. It's just outside the kitchen window, and the buds are thick and burgeoning and promise to be stunning, and as I'm smiling at the memory, the phone rings, and it's that same child, letting me know that French sucks (he's out of practice and has one more class of French before being done -- the French teacher chastised him for bringing a French dictionary to class and told him to simply ask if he didn't understand what she was saying... but since even the instructions are in French, he's lost. He told her that would be a lot of "asking" because he was barely getting every fifth word. I think he's dropping French.) and grousing about falling down stairs (spilled coffee) and generally, cracking me up the entire time we talked.

Sometimes, we don't get to know the end of the stories we see around us; life is like that, it's fast and chaotic and very rarely do things tie off neatly or parallel nicely. But I remember how Granny (Carl's grandmother) who lived across from us would look at certain flowers or trees and there would be this wave of nostalgia, and I'd think she was a little daft, because a tree was a tree was a tree. Except, now, when it's not. Sometimes there are strange connections which mark for us a moment, that moment of breathing again, that moment where the color floods back into the world and we realize we just might be okay. And seeing that same tree, twenty-two years later, and knowing that it came true, that we were okay, that we made it, that there has been much color and laughter and smiles and living. I understand now.

And as I listen to my son and all that he's saying, making me laugh, there is this little part of me that suddenly realizes that one day, he'll have those associations, too, and maybe with his own child, and then so on and so on. He knows I've planted the tree, but I'm not sure I've ever told him why, and how looking at it reminds me of that moment I looked down at him and just knew, understood, what a gift he was, and that it was going to be okay.

I think I will call him back and tell him.

recycling

Luke glanced into the pantry and noticed that the recycling bin was nearly overflowing with diet coke cans.

"Mom! You could build a small airplane from those cans."

"And your point is?"

"You've really got to quit drinking so many diet cokes. They're not good for you."

"Kid, step away from my diet coke habit. It's my blankie, because right now I am eating low carbs, which deprives me of all the things I love: pasta, cheetos, fritos, brownies, cake, cookies, chocolate, m&ms, pizza, and pie. "

"Wait a minute. You don't like pie."

"I MIGHT have LOVED pie, and now I'll never know, because I can't eat it and I can't eat any of those other things and I'm living on that ragged edge of insanity and the diet coke is the only thing keeping me from crossing the line into the machete-killing-spree zone."

"Mom?"

"What?"

"Did you know that your head sort of spun around and your eyes got really bulgey there for a minute."

"You threatened the diet coke."

"Here's a glass of ice. Should I pop the top for you?"

"Survival instincts?"

"You betcha."

"Don't say I never taught you anything."

on cheesy food...

Me to oldest son, Luke: So I hear you called your grandmother, your aunt and your dad to find out how to cook the roast in your new crockpot.

Luke: Yeah. They were a big help.

Me: But you never called me!

Luke: So?

Me: So, I cook!

Luke: Yeah, and if I ever want to cook something with cheese on it, I'll call you.

(I would have smacked him, but he had a point.)

Carl took a pan of excellent baked potato casserole he'd made out of the refrigerator; he and Luke were going to eat the left-overs. I was sitting in my office, which has a door open to the kitchen so I can see what they're doing.

Luke pulled off the lid and they both looked at it with a little shock.

Carl: I see your mom has been eating the potatoes. She ate all the tops where the cheese was.

Luke sees me giving Carl the death-glare.

Luke, to me: What? Why are you annoyed he said that?

Me: Well it's not like I did it on purpose.

(Luke cracks up. I realized what I've said and I'm not sure if I can come up with a rational justification for why the cheesy tops are gone since I have been the only one home, so I opt for shutting up.)

Carl: That's okay. We'll just put more cheese on them.

Me: Um, we're out of cheese.

Luke: Imagine that.

apparently, English isn't spoken here

Every once-in-a-while, I'll get questions from my kids that makes me wonder if they ever actually heard anything while growing up here. They know I was an English major, and they'll call out-of-the-blue with the weirdest word questions. Now, I was always a bookworm and routinely, I'll know what a word means (sensing it out in a sentence), but not necessarily how to pronounce it, and since I don't talk to that many other bookworms on a regular basis, I'm perfectly capable of mangling the pronunciation of the less-than-prosaic words. So if my kids were asking me how to pronounce something, I wouldn't worry. But no, they call me to see what a word means. (Ah, the use of cell phones while driving and without access to a dictionary. Finally, I have a use in life.)

Luke called during finals last semester. Luke is 22 and has a very good GPA in political science. The kid is gifted. And yet, he called me and said, "Mom? What does 'exasperating' mean?" I'm wondering if he found his photo in the dictionary or something. So I ask "why?" first. "Because ____ (his major professor) told me today that I was exasperating. It didn't sound like a good thing." I'm nodding, thinking, yes, intuitive professor. Not a good thing to say, though, so I ask him, "Um, just how did the professor use the word?" "Oh," Luke said, "he said that the whole time he read my paper, he thought I was on the verge of something brilliant and instead, I just ended up exasperating."

Does a mother proud.

To give him credit (and I'm stretching for it here), I think he was so surprised by the comment and the way in which is was delivered, it sounded like a compliment, which was so at odds with the topic they were discussing, that Luke wondered if he was confused. Like Inigo Montoya... "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Then the youngest son (18) called tonight and said, "Mom? What does it mean when someone is 'implicated' in something?" And yes, I did get very quiet in that moment and listened intently to see if there were sirens or cops in the background of his phone call. I was almost afraid of answering that one, and more afraid to ask why he wanted to know. Turned out, someone had used it incorrectly and he was trying to settle a bet. (And no dictionary present, of course. That would just be wrong.)

You'll have to excuse me while I go write out things like my own obituary. I'm not leaving anything to chance or I might end up being "exasperating." However, I have decided that any important, top secret documents I might ever need to hide are going in the dictionary. The kids will never look there.

'tater launch

They kept forecasting for rain, and probably somewhere around fifty people after all was said and done. Because I was busy visiting with everyone, I nearly forgot to take photos, but managed to get a couple of the tater launching:

That's Luke (left) and Jake (right) prepping to shoot. Luke made that 'tater gun just a couple of hours prior to the party.

Here's a close-up of Luke spraying in the propellant:

And of course, our fancy schmancy target:

There were kids running around, hence the spacewalk:

Tons of food, lots of fun and great company. We only had one minor injury. My neice (16) saw her cousins about to launch taters and decided to go stand near the target. I don't know why. A 'tater part riccocheted off and smacked her on the thigh, but no bruising.

(Someone asked last post about the emergency trip. That would be for Luke, a couple of years ago. The first year, Luke singed his hair on one side when looking into the barrel (from the side, near the flint). Next year, he singed his eyebrows. The emergency room year, he got a piece of flint in his eye. All of this while trying to make it safe for the other people to handle it. I pointed out to him that perhaps "safe" didn't mean what he thought it meant, since he was the only one getting injured, and that if he got injured again, we would be cancelling the 'tater launch. He's managed to be injury-free for two years.)

'tater launch prep day

Tomorrow will be our 5th Annual 'Tater Launch party, where we gather everyone we can (whoever is sober enough after a big NY's night out) and they come to our house for lunch and sometime during the afternoon, they will all go outside to the backyard where they will put a potato into a PVC pipe "gun" and will -- through various mechanical means, some hair-spray as propellant, and a flint -- ignite said 'tater and shoot it out of the gun.

Yes, we are all about class 'round here, let me tell you.

The first year started innocently enough, I suppose. Friends were visiting from D.C., and they'd never been here. I wanted to minimize their perception of southerners as "hicks" and so had planned a couple of minor events to showcase Louisiana and our culture. The very first night, though, Carl and the wife of my friend started riffing at the restaurant on potatoes and ways to serve them. They hadn't even been drinking, and somehow, launching 'taters at people in a drive-through was suggested and before I knew what had happened, Carl was explaining shooting 'taters from a 'tater gun. The wife said she'd never heard or seen such a thing and Carl promised her that she'd get to shoot a 'tater before she left. So much for not being hicks. I don't know what I was expecting.

Anyway, the next day or so went well, and I thought everyone had forgotten about the 'tater gun, but then on the first, when our families and a few friends came over for lunch and to meet my visiting friends, the next thing I knew is that Carl and Luke and Jake had broken out the 'tater gun and were outside with my visiting friends and they were shooting 'taters. We live in a nice neighborhood, people. And my family was outside, shooting 'taters over the neighbor's yards at first, until they realized that maybe that wasn't such a bright idea. I was fairly mortified until I looked out there and realized the wife had ahold of the 'tater gun and was so excited about shooting one, she was jumping with glee.

So that's how it began. And everyone leaving there that day said, "See you next year for the next 'tater launch" and the tradition was born.

Now we have lots and lots of food, I get a spacewalk for the little kids (which just arrived as I write this) and there are TVs on everywhere with whatever big game is on. Meanwhile, everyone pigs out and shoots 'taters (now we build a big target so we don't littler the neighbors' yards) and general silliness prevails.

(There has been only one emergency room visit. I am strangely proud of that.)

Photos tomorrow...

conversations with the dead

Well, it felt like it was with the dead, for all the interaction I was getting.

Me: Hi. I called in yesterday for the refill on the prescription for my husband. They said your office had to call it in, and no one's called in yet.

Dr.'s Office Woman (DOW): Well, you should have left a message.

Me: I did. Three of them. I spoke to you, first. And then left two on the voice mail when you forwarded me when you told me you were going to get me a nurse.

DOW: Oh. Let me get the nurse for you now.

Me: Oh, no you don't. I know that trick. I want to talk to you. When is your office going to call in the refill?

DOW: I don't do that, Ma'am. So I don't know. You'll have to talk to the nurse.

Me: Is she there?

DOW: Certainly, if you'll leave her a message, she'll call you right--

Me: No, I mean, is she standing right there next to your elbow?

DOW: Um, no....

Me: Well, then nope, I don't want to talk to her, I want to talk to you. I want you to shout to her -- I've seen your office, I know her little desk is in a corner three feet away from you. So you just shout on over to her and find out when she's going to call in that refill, because I'm not buying this whole "gonna call ya back" scheme.

DOW: (haughtily) This is not a scheme, Ma'am. We have certain procedures we must follow and--

Me: Okay, see. I have a procedure, too. Here's how my procedure works. I start off nice and polite and I try to follow the rules, but then you people don't do what you're supposed to do. So then I get creative. Really very very creative. And you want to know how creative I can get? I figured out that instead of waiting here by the phone to find out when you've refilled the prescription so that I can go run my errands and pick it up, especially after you've toyed with me for the whole day yesterday and teased me that somebody over there was actually going to refill the damned thing, I realized I would have PLENTY of time to drive on over to your office and stand in front of your desk. That way, as soon as you saw the nurse, you could grab her and get her to sit her scrawny little ass down and make the phone call to the pharmacy. Or you could fax them from the fax machine that is two inches to your left. See, if I'm going to spend ALL THAT TIME WAITING, I'm going to do it where I can at least get some entertainment. And if you think I'm chatty right now, just IMAGINE me standing in your office, not two feet in front of you, striking up conversations with everyone all of those hours and you know what? I've got a WHOLE LOT OF ENERGY right now, seeing how I have all this built-up-- what's that? Oh, there's the nurse. Really. And she's what?

(she holds the phone so I can hear the nurse telling the pharmacy to refill the presecription... then she returns to the line)

DOW: Ma'am? Your refill's going to be ready in about five minutes.

Me: Thank you. And you might want to put a note down next to my name that says "Crazy stalker person" so that the next time I call, we don't have to do this, okay?

DOW: Um, yes ma'am.

Me: Good. Now you have a nice day.

hmph.

top cluck

Christmas morning, and gift carnage, and so much strewn wrapping paper, we may never find the cat again, and all is good. And you know how it is that the majority of the time, the kids like the boxes as much as the gifts, or they'll like the cheapest thing you get much much more than the big deal present? Well, to continue that tradition, both the boys loved, coveted, and drooled over their brand spanking new "super balls" -- the mega bouncy take-out-every-knick-knack ball for a dollar at the dollar store that I bought at the last minute to put in their stockings. Which Luke, 22, managed to bounce into the fire in the fireplace after I repeatedly told him NOT TO BOUNCE IT IN THE HOUSE, TO WAIT 'TIL HE GOT TO HIS OWN HOUSE. He snatched it out of the fire, and it's now got little flame-ish swoopy changes in the color. Or their favorite may have been the toy (plastic, 1 foot long) bow and arrows their dad gave them WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE OR PERMISSION, PEOPLE. The package in which Carl had placed: cotton balls, vaseline and a lighter. To make flaming arrows, you see. Which, of course, they did immediately but at least shot them out onto the patio area so they couldn't catch the house on fire. (The vaseline makes the cotton balls burn longer.)(Oh, the joy.)

And Carl's favorite? Well, it's probably a tie between the DVD of all of the Road Runner and other Looney Tunes or the:

Rubber chickens. Five, because he must have asked me a million times for the last two years if anyone was getting him one. (The little ones are key chains, because everyone really needs a rubber chicken key chain. Right?)

Carl had loaned his original rubber chicken to his sister (he's 45, she's 43, I do not make these things up, people), and she wouldn't give it back. She also has one of those invisible dog walking leash things that belongs to him, the kind you get from Disney? That she's strapped his chicken into so it looks like she's walking the rubber chicken. So I figured after hearing about that chicken for two years, I would get him FIVE, because really, that would be WAY MORE THAN NECESSARY to shut him up about the chicken. And did that work? Of course not. He immediately got a kick out of them and then decided, wow, he really wants FIFTY of them now because he wants to make a RUBBER CHICKEN CHANDELIER. And dress them all up in little aviator caps and goggles and parachutes. And maybe even wire them and hook up the mechanics so that they could dance to music. Or fly in some sort of synchronized pattern. He's going to have them all be "Top Cluck" fliers, the top 10% recruited to fly for their country. Or something.

I'd call the men with the funny little white coats, but he'd probably recruit them into making the damned thing.

puddy-the-red-nosed-cat

So, I wake up on Christmas Eve, groggy as all hell because I'd stayed up until three a.m. to wrap the rest of the presents. (And because my dad was having to hide my mom's presents at our house, I was wrapping those, too.) I stumble semi-blindly into the office and plop in front of the computer to check e-mail, and the cat rises up out of her basket to greet me and something seemed odd... and I squinted, and then I realized it wasn't bad enough that Carl had tried to wrap the cat, now he had given her a bright red nose:

That's red ink. (It's washing off.) Thank God I got there before he had figured out how to wire little antlers on her head.

(And she's so dumb, if given a choice, she'll go love on him first. She has no idea of the amount of times I have saved her so far.)

hurdling the reindeer

Just so I'm not only abusing the oldest son...

When Jake was three (and Luke, seven), it was time for the Christmas shopping expedition. There really is nothing more pleasant than bundling up two little kids, doubling their size with the warm outfits (which takes two hours and several bathroom breaks and there will be parts of the outfits which they will shed in various places and you'll never ever ever see the match to that sock so don't even hope for it), buckling them into the car seats (which takes another two hours and they've already grown by that point, so you have to re-dress them again) and then finally making your way to the mall which is so crowded, you have to park in the next state and walk three billion miles with two little kids, (one in the stroller) and then fight a mass of people just to get inisde. Luckily on that outing, I was meeting my mom (or else everyone would have had IOU notes for Christmas at that point)(just call me Grinch).

The part that had me nervous was that Jake was sort of decently potty trained... as long as we were home. But he was the world's worst about waiting until the very last minute to tell us he had to go to the bathroom. Put him in front of a crowd, and he'd clam up and we wouldn't realize the problem until the problem had already happened. He insisted on wearing his new underwear (and was absolutely heart-broken and destroyed that I might not let him because he was a BIG BOY). So I emphasized for the entire ride to the mall that he MUST tell me when he needed to go to the bathroom and as soon as he knew. Not to wait. I'd say, "You're going to tell Mama, right?" to which he'd say, "Nope." "Oh, sure you are, you're going to tell Mama early enough, right?" "Nope." He'd laugh, but I wasn't entirely sure if he was joking (I mean, he was three. Did three year olds know blackmail that early? Or was he just joking?)

When we were in the mall, I must have asked him a trillion times if he needed to go, and he kept saying no. All I was praying for was at least a little tug on my sleeve or a pained expression -- any small clue, but he was laughing and happy and busy toppling displays whenever I'd so much as look for a micro-second in another direction....

[an aside... when he was the same age, about a month earlier, we were at the park watching Luke play t-ball. Jake ran up to me and said, "Mama, I go push tree down?" I looked over where he was pointing at these -- and I'm not exaggerating -- thirty-foot trees about ten feet behind me and I said, "Sure." Because hey, it would keep him busy and what could he hurt? Well, a little while later, one of the other kids tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Ms. Toni? I think you better look." And I turned around and the child had pushed one of those staked trees to a 45 degree angle. Blew my mind. I still don't know how he did it and the other kids swear they didn't help.]

So, anyway, Jake was mutilating Christmas displays, Mom and I were trying to watch both Jake and Luke (who probably was over somewhere conning some man out of his wristwatch). We had finally made all of our selections and had been waiting in a very long line at the check-out. Very long line. I had two birthdays while I was waiting and I filled out retirement forms. Long. Line.

Finally, I was up next to be checked out, when I suddenly realized Jake wasn't right by my side. I looked over and there he was in the aisle and he was squatting down with a big grin on his face. And he shouted, "Mommy, I HAVE TO POOO POOOOOOOOO." The kid I couldn't get to whisper the word "bathroom" was shouting "Poooo Poooooh." Over. And. Over. I swear, he was so loud, LSU called and he'd registered on the Richter scale in the geology department. And then he started turning red-faced with the effort.

I looked down at my three thousand selections that I was just about to purchase and the VERY long line that had taken me now six years to navigate just to get up to the cash register and then over at that kid turning bright red and I swear, for this brief moment, I wondered which level of hell I'd be sent to if I checked out first.

The entire store froze with horror and every single person there looked at me like they were personally going to write to God and have me thrown out of the human race because I hadn't planned better and my child was about to poo in the middle of the department store with his little Christmas gift. I caved and threw down my purchases and grabbed the diaper bag from my mom and scooped him up. People were parting like the Red Sea and clerks were guiding me through the masses in the store like I was a 747 landing with toxic wastes. I ran, people. Ran. Took out customers, knocked a display of Christmas ornaments all over the floor and slid through a display of gloves. At some point, I hurdled a reindeer display to get to the bathroom and the whole way there, I'm begging him to wait just one more second, we'll be there! We'll make it! And we rushed into the bathroom and just in the nick of time...

For him to giggle. And say, "I no have to poo pooo, Mama."

Somewhere between my wheezing for breath and my tears, I said, "Kid. You are going to poo or else we're never leaving this room. Ever."

Of course, he giggled again.

To be had, by a three-year-old. He was perfectly fine the entire rest of the trip. No poo, no potty, no nothing but giggles. I probably should have frisked him for wallets or watches or deeds to old people's houses.

(And one day, when he has a kid of his own? I am so teaching that kid all sorts of bad tricks.)

sneaky

When the boys were dropping in last night, I knew at least one of them would "wander" into our master bedroom and casually sneak a peek to see if there were any presents unwrapped. I hoped that since they were, you know, actually GROWN MEN now, they would refrain from such silliness, but on the off chance that either of them was tempted, I hid the presents and set a little trap.

Luke walked back into the kitchen, and looked at me with such disappointment.

"Way to lose your edge there, Mom."

"What do you mean?"

"What'd you do, think, 'Oh, I'll hide these presents. I'll throw a sheet over them, no one will suspect a thing!' Man, that's not even a challenge! You used to be so creative. Remember the duct taped closet door and the secret patterns so you'd know when we moved anything? Or the time you put the voice-activated tape recorder in your bedroom so you'd know if we went in there? Or the time you booby-trapped the whole attic?"

"But I set a trap! I would know if you went in if you tripped it."

"Kinda defeats the purpose if I've already found the presents."

"YOU'RE 22! Do you know this?"

Toni asked in the comments just how my throwing the sheet over them was a trap (well, that's paraphrased, she asked it better). I had put pennies on the tops of the closet doors because what the boys usually did was go try to look for something and then DENY DENY DENY that they ever even had an impure thought about finding their Christmas presents. So the only way I thought I'd know if they peeked was if the pennies fell from the exact location I'd placed them. (I learned long ago not to use tape or anything they could see because they'd put it back in the right spot. But they can't see exactly where the pennies are and once they've fallen, they have to guess where to put them back and it's rare that they're right. So then I know they've been in the closet.) They've gotten so good at denying and playing "innocent" that I figured the dropped pennies would rat them out. I didn't bargain for the fact that he would brazenly open the door and make fun of me for only putting sheets over the presents. I think he's right -- I'm definitely losing my edge.

(He says he didn't look -- that the challenge just wasn't there. Man, if that was the secret all along? Damn.)

smack me with the stupid stick

My oldest son was here a little while ago with his girlfriend. He'd been waiting until after finals to do his Christmas shopping and now that they're over and he's survived (sort of), he was going to go pick out her present tonight. He wanted to ask my advice, so he made an excuse to go to the back of the house and a few minutes later, I followed. (I have yet to actually see him "fold some clothes to bring back to [his] house" so I knew that was complete bollocks and an obvious ruse.) His plan was to drop her off at a friend's house and pick up her present, then meet them out.

In the process of talking about the gift, which type to purchase, what accessories he was going to need, he mentioned which store he was going to. A few minutes later, and right before we went back into the other room where his girldfriend was, he said, "Now, don't mention the store. Whatever you do, she's already suspicious."

I could not believe he had the nerve to warn me. ME. Who is such an old pro at hiding what people have for Christmas, I could give lessons. The person who was so convincing when not letting someone figure out what they'd had for a present, they went and bought another damned one of them for themselves, which meant me returning the original. The person who sat with someone for THREE HOURS and fixed some things on their old computer, even though I knew they had a new one about to show up in two days, but I knew that they knew I would know what they were getting and I didn't want them to figure it out, so I fixed a junk computer for THREE HOURS that I'll never get back because they ended up not ever using that old computer again. I am a PRO at this, baby. A pro. The CIA should hire me. I am that good.

So what did I do when I walked back out there where my son was now standing not far from his girlfriend? Did I strike up the witty, diverting banter? Did I talk about the weather, the holiday lights, the traffic, the way that my neighbor's 16-year-old son had shown up at my back door clad only in his boxers because he'd gotten his car stuck in the mud when he wasn't where he was supposed to be and he was trying to keep his clothes clean so his mom wouldn't find out and wanted my youngest son to help him get out of the mud? (Didn't work.) No, of all of the three quibillion things I could have said right then, what did I, the professional present-hiderer, supreme secret keeper do?

I looked at the shirt he had on, noticed a hole in the front and said, "You're not really going to wear that to Best Buy, are you?"

Yes, just smack me with the stupid stick. Man.

He turned (where she couldn't see him) and gave me that long, slow death glare he's perfected (I don't know where he could have possibly learned that one from). And I tried to cover.

"Well, I mean, seriously, it's a crap shirt and you've got to pick up that present for your dad for me and you'll have my check to pay them. I don't want them to think you're some sort of bum who mugged me in the parking lot."

"Gee, Mom. Thanks."

"Hey, I'm just here to help." (If looks could kill, I'd be sizzling right now.)

Something tells me the CIA isn't going to be calling anytime soon.

and then there's always the bow

Carl (husband) decided to wrap a few presents. Whenver Carl has possession of anything like scissors and tape, certain animals in our house should know to be afraid. Unfortunately, the cat is as dumb as a bag of sticks, and I think that's probably an insult to sticks everywhere. So a little while later, I find Carl, by himself, in the living room, chuckling. Not a good sign.

Me: What are you doing?
Carl (a little too innocently): Wrapping.
Me: Where are the presents you've wrapped?
Carl: Um, over there.

He points to a sort of oblong present which is wiggling and has a cat paw sticking out of it.

Me: You wrapped the cat?
Carl: She kept sitting in the middle of the paper. So I figured she wanted to participate.
Me: And exactly how did she seem to take it?
Carl: Well, she rolled off the table, and she's got two paws out, so I'm thinking she's not entirely in the Christmas spirit.

A half hour later, she was out of the paper and attacking it, running away and then sneaking up on it again. Now he wants to tape a bow to her head. I'm not sure we're going to survive Christmas. She already hides in the tree and leaps out and pounces on anyone walking past. Which makes the tree wobble. I just know one day I'm going to walk in there and the entire tree is going to be on the floor with one very happy cat sitting to the side. All she'll need are the little bubble words over her head, saying, "Wrap that, you sucker."

time traveling again...

Carl's been invited to exhibit his Time Machine with a traveling Smithsonian exhibit. It's for kids (who tend to love the crazy thing he made) and the "installation" is in January. I'm not sure how long the exhibit runs, but woo! Smithsonian. He's over the moon.

Carl's Time Travel Machine was featured again a few weeks ago at a local Gallery, which ended up having several hundred people moving through the art exhibition that night. The first night he'd been invited last may, we took these photos. I've got a bunch more from that night and from this new night that I need to get up on that site in thumbnails, but if you haven't seen them, they're funny.

you may all cease to shop now, because

I have single handedly killed Christmas, according to my oldest son. I know, I know, it's early yet, but just think of all the time and trouble I've saved you.

I would like to say in my own self-defense that it was an innocent offense which caused the entire demise of Christmas, but I would be lying. It was premeditated, planned and executed with all the stealth of James Bond in his latest BMW. The offense? We didn't buy a real tree this year.

Every single year of their lives, the kids have had a real tree. I was adamant that only a real tree truly meant "Christmas" was here, so I only have myself to blame, because I was never going to have a fake one. Never. Ever. And not just a real tree, but as big a tree as we could possibly afford. The smallest I think we ever had was seven feet tall, and since we've been in this house with the higher ceilings in the living room, they've been as much as ten feet tall. Except the one year a couple of years ago when we couldn't agree on any single tree anywhere on any lot in the entire city and then I turned around and spied the most perfect Christmas tree... which was fourteen feet tall. I didn't believe them that it was really fourteen feet though my husband kept assuring me I had lost my mind and there was no way that tree was ever going to fit into the door, much less be able to stand up in the living room, but I was so exhausted and we had all fought so much by that point, he bought the damned tree just to get it over with so we could quit and go home. When they started loading it into the back of my oldest son's pick-up truck, I suddenly had some perspective as to just how big that stupid tree was... more than half of it hung off the back of the truck. Not a good sign. When we got it home, Carl stood the tree up near the back door so that I could see the problem and it was higher than the roofline. Er. Oops. He had to cut four feet off the bottom of that tree just so it could stand up in the living room, and it was such a huge tree, we almost had to move everything out just to fit it inside. I'm not kidding, it had a nine foot diameter. Yes. Nine. No, that is not an exaggeration. It took me three days on a scaffold and my kids' entire college tuition for more ornaments to decorate that damned tree, but by God, I was going to decorate it because I wasn't about to admit that maybe, possibly, Carl had been right and it was a little too big.

Somewhere along the way in my childhood, I had this sort of Hallmark image of families who tra-la-la'd out to the real tree lot and cut their own tree, all smiles and hand-holding and hot chocolate when they got home, whereupon they would begin the decorating process with great joy and laughter and create wonderful memories of the holiday. Please, if anyone knows a family like this, point them out to me so I can beat them to death. This has never, ever, been our experience.

Oh, we tried. We'd always ...

...go the day after Thanksgiving, we'd pile into the truck and we'd head out to the various tree farms and the bickering started the moment we got there. Invariably, the kids would run off in different directions and choose completely different looking trees and start lobbying hard for the tree of their choice and man, I know how Sophie felt, because if I dared choose one child's pick over the other child? That meant I didn't love the non-pickee. At all. Might as well ship them off to an orphanage, for the drama we'd have. Even when we'd all talk about this ahead of time and come to an agreement (when they got old enough for things like that work), and it looked like it might be smooth sailing? Nope. It was genetically impossible for them to pick the same tree or agree that the other's choice might be better suited, and God forbid I find a third choice that might be a good compromise because then they each had to go find another choice to try to out-do my choice and it just would never end. I'd be standing in the middle of the Christmas tree farm wondering if anyone would notice if I just offed myself by the flocking station while they were running to and fro, and Carl was seriously off to the side of the place, sneezing already, because he's allergic.

Yes, the man is allergic to Christmas trees and yet he loves us so much, he insisted we have a real one every year because it meant so much to the kids.

So every year, I'd end up having to choose one and whichever child's wasn't selected, said child generally pouted and stewed and frowned and sighed heavily for the rest of the night. Or stomped off in a huff.

This was just so much fun, we did it every. single. year.

When the kids were little, they'd help with decorating the tree... for about fifteen minutes. They wanted to help. They planned to help. But a tree that size takes a little while and they'd get bored and wander off. I didn't mind so much because one of the few things I enjoyed was decorating the tree. I put hundreds of things on the tree, and not all traditional types of things. There are lacy white crocheted snowflakes my grandmother made me. Tiny red and white roses to represent my other grandmother. Bows for Carl's grandmother. Tiny white doves -- dozens -- on the tips of the limbs about to take flight to represent my Paw Paw (my mom's dad). (He fed doves every morning of his adult life -- he'd take a bit of feed outside and toss it to two or three pair of doves. The day before he died, he went outside to feed the doves and there were so many, probably more than a hundred. It filled him with such joy that he chuckled most of the day and planned on getting more feed in case they all came back. He died in his sleep the next morning, and I've always felt that the doves had come to say goodbye and thanks.) There are little wooden ornaments for my dad's dad, and several things representing the kids (teddy bears, drums, toys, etc.) All told, I put close to 700 ornaments on the tree, which can take as much as two days. It's always a beautiful tree, and I know that's why the boys kept insisting on the real tree -- they loved the meaning.

But I hated the way it would die by Christmas. (They hated waiting and we'd always end up with a lot of family functions every weekend in December, so the day after Thanksgiving became the default day, since everyone was home and generally off work.) (The trick to making a real one last is not only to water it daily, but to put about 20 aspirin in the water every day. The aspirin helps the tree wick the water up into the limbs and will keep it fresher, longer.) Still. We'd get it the day after Thanksgiving and by Christmas Day, the tree would always be dropping its needles and looking a bit grim. In addition, we throw a huge party on New Year's Day, and I couldn't leave the tree up for that -- no way would it make it -- so I had to take all 700 ornaments down and then all the lights (while completely identifying with the Little Red Hen), and then get the house ready for 100 guests. Not easy.

So, I wanted a good fake tree. Something that I could leave up. Something that I could leave the smaller ornaments which tie onto the limbs on... just the dangly ones would have to be removed. But every year I mentioned it, both boys had heart attacks, and I'd relent and we'd go back through the real tree process once again.

This year, though, I saw the tree I wanted. Pre-lit with 1200 lights, gorgeous, ten feet tall and when I stood in front of it in the store, I could not tell it wasn't a real tree. Seriously, could not tell. It was on sale. It came home with me. (I wish I had a picture of me and the sales guy trying to wedge that ten foot tree which was in a six foot box into the back seat of my very little car. I was determined not to have to go back.)

My youngest son, on hearing I'd bought a fake tree, said, "Awww, mom, don't do that!" And I said, "Too late, already did," and he said, "Bummer." That was the extent of his frustration. I did not tell the oldest son. The tree sat here for four weeks, in the box, waiting for today, but I didn't say anything. Neither son lives with us anymore, and the oldest is 22, and you'd think a 22-year-old would be able to let things go, but not this kid. He actually walked by the box a couple of times and didn't ask what was inside, so I neglected to mention it. Hey, I'm not a masochist.

But last night, while I was putting the tree together, he called. And his dad told him about the fake tree. He made his dad hand me the phone, and he said, "MOM! You're not serious! You didn't really buy a fake tree, did you?" To which I said, "Yes, Luke I really did."

He couldn't believe it. He so couldn't believe it that he kept asking me over and over again, as if the billionth time was going to get him the answer he wanted, and when I finally convinced him that yes, I had actually done the dastardly deed of buying a fake tree, he said, "You've KILLED CHRISTMAS!" He said it in the same tone a kid would say about discovering there's no Santa or Easter Bunny. And when he's that upset, he's hysterical. I end up cracking up at him because of the increduality in a twenty-two year-old at something like that is just damned funny. But he kept saying I'd killed Christmas, which kinda broke my heart.

I'm sure the real problem is that he has a new girlfriend and he was looking forward to including her in the family outing and that just got sliced away from him when he least expected it. And, too, he lives on his own now in a house and he hadn't (until now) put up his own tree, so our going to get one was the only Christmas tradition he had, which I did really feel terrible about. (I hadn't thought of that prior to getting the tree.) He and his girlfriend came over last night and saw the tree, which looks completely real, and he glared at it and wouldn't hardly acknowledge its presence. I pointed out that Christmas was about us and family and we could all get together and squabble over this tree as we go outside to "pick it out" of the storage shed and haul it in, but I don't think he liked my teasing.

I decorated it today, and it's gorgeous. It's one of the best trees I've ever done, and ultimately, neither of the boys live here... they'll come through here from time to time, but not terribly often, and they're old enough to start their own traditions... but I still feel conflicted. I love this tree -- it's beautiful, and next year, will be way easier since I won't have to put on all the little ornaments again (they're staying on). But I'm sad I've abruptly brought a tradition to an end (well, if "abruptly" can be described as discussing it for five years and then finally doing it). I know he's really bothered by it and I can't change it now. Of course, I console myself with the memory that he felt the exact same way about the Tooth Fairy, and he survived that knowledge, so he'll survive this one.

I think.

Here's the culprit:

and a close-up of my teddy bear "star"...

It's much prettier than the photos... the flash sort of undoes the magic of the lights, and it's difficult to get the detail in the photo. Anyway, I love it.

my brother's on Monster House -- tonight

Edited later to add:

I thought he did pretty well, and while I'm frustrated about a couple of things, the fact that he got to have a clip with him teaching the boys how to break a board is really terrific, since he owns his own Karate school. The one small thing that annoyed me was that small slab for the bottom of the stairs -- what you saw on TV was nothing like what happened. First, the architect was there and he and Steve (the host) measured and indicated off camera where that slab was to go, then handed Mike the tape measure and told him to "act" like he'd just measured it. Mike suspected it was wrong, but trusted the host, and once he'd "acted" like he'd put it there, he wasn't going to whine about it later. Which all was okay, except for them to say that it was his mistake in voice-over... kinda a cheap shot.

There had been a lot of arguing (some of which you saw) and I was glad they showed that Mike knew how to do the boards for the side of the building (ripping them was what he was suggesting) and the other guy kept acting like an ass, and then they ultimately did Mike's suggestion.

(I sound like an over-protective big sister, don't I? I guess you never really leave that behind.)

At any rate, there were also a lot of funny times and laughter that didn't make it onto the show, particularly with that really muscled guy, Trebor. He did a lot of impressions of famous people and had the entire crew (and TV crew) rolling with laughter several times.

But overall, I thought it was great and that Mike looked good. Thanks for watching and commenting here.

Hey -- y'all watch Monster House tonight and see my brother, Mike McGee help to build the clubhouse for a local boy with leukemia. They had a blast on the build. I meant to post this earlier and almost forgot! Yikes!

Discovery Channel, by the way.

sweet nothings

Earlier tonight, I was sound asleep, as was Carl, when:

Carl: That thing. You got that thing?
Me: hmph? Wha... huh?
Carl: That thing. With the engine. And the parts?
Me: The whadahuh?
Carl: The one you got on e-Bay.
Me: Oh. You're talking in your sleep.
Carl: It's gonna look good on you. With the engine. And those things. You know.
Me: Engine? Things?
Carl: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Me: !!!!

Usually I can decipher what he's dreaming and talking about, and it's no big deal. But then I was just awake enough to start wondering what thing with an engine he could be thinking about that I might wear. Which just woke me right-the-hell up. Now I can't fall back to sleep. And the worst part is, he'll never remember what it was all about in the morning. grrrrrrrrrr.

on heredity and saw disasters...

My dad called me yesterday when I was in line at the bank. He was working on putting up crown molding in his kitchen and had hit a snag. For reasons beyond his understanding, when he cut a piece which had to butt up against the first piece he'd installed, the angle didn't match and it wasn't working. He had made one cut and he hadn't wanted to screw up that long stick of molding (because he wanted the piece along that prominent wall to be without a splice), and so he'd come to the quick solution that he would use one of the smaller "drops" or "leftover" pieces, hold it up to the place where the crown had to butt up against the other crown and draw a pattern. Once he was able to match that angle, he would transfer the pattern onto the longer piece and cut it.

Now, this was a good idea, and logical, except that it didn't work. And he couldn't figure out why, so he kept trying over and over and over. He wanted Carl to come out there right then and figure out what he was doing wrong. (We're all about the patience, my family.)

Me: Well, it should be easy enough to do it with a pattern, right?
Dad: When I started, this damned molding was four feet long.
Me: And?
Dad: It's now six damned inches long. I'm about to throw that damned miter saw through the window.
Me: I'll call Carl. Right now. Step away from the saw.
Dad: Why are you laughing?

I am my father's daughter.

What he had forgotten about was my own little run-in with a saw and measuring fiasco.

When I was twenty and pregnant with Luke and we moved into the haunted house (see the ghost story below), the kitchen was shockingly antiquated. There were only two cupboards, no drawers at all, (no pantry), and no place to keep things like cutlery. Nor was there free wall space for a piece of furniture. The sink was one of those humongous cast iron jobs that have a long, shallow bowl section flanked by draining areas on each side. There were no cabinents below, where perfectly functional space went to waste.

This bugged the living crap out of me.

Carl went to his dad's antique store, rummaged around, came home and proudly showed me a little chest sort of thing he'd discovered. It looked like a piano stool with pretensions. Slightly taller than that sort of stool, it was too low to comfortably use as a work surface (and I'm only 5'3", so you know that had to be short), but too tall to sit on. Its only saving grace was that there were two drawers side-by-side which Carl had surmised would solve all of the kitchen's problems. (I'm going with "optimist" here.)(Bonus points if you know what I was really thinkikng.)

Anyway.

He placed it in the center of the kitchen as an island. As I was growing gargantuan in size with the pregnancy, I would move into the kitchen and forget the damned little table thing was there and impale my thigh on the sharp corners, multiple times a day. You'd think I'd remember it was there, but no, my hormone addled brain refused to accept the existance of such an awkward piece of furniture in the middle of the room.

And then I had a brilliant idea. I'm telling you, the genius of it made me feel like there should be announcements in the paper the next day, saying "GENIUS WOMAN SOLVES KITCHEN PROBLEM, WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE."

The kitchen sink had empty space beneath it. The table thingy was kinda short. Why not shove table thingy under the kitchen sink, therefore keeping usable drawer space and getting rid of nasty stabby table corners (which I was starting to suspect were leaping out and doing the stabby thing on purpose after the table heard me call it ugly.) See? Brilliant.

Only, table thingy didn't ~quite~ fit. It hit the outer rim of the cast-iron sink and needed to be about 1/4th of an inch shorter. No problemo. I figured that since Carl was a contractor, he must have construction-type tools outside somewhere, and I would just go find something that looked saw-like. So I marched (waddled) my pregnant self out to the garage and started rummaging around and found only one thing that sort of looked like a saw, though it was bow-shaped across the back of the saw with a large-toothed saw blade that wiggled. I wasn't sure what it was a saw for, but hey, it was a saw, it would do.

(I later learned it was the kind of saw that you use to cut small limbs from trees. It never got to live long enough to have that joy, I am sorry to say.)

So. Had saw. Had table. Had space. Easy peasy. Lay the table on its side, oops, remove drawers which are now completely jumbled. Start cutting about 1/4th of an inch off one of the legs.

The saw was hard to control in a straight line -- the blade quivered and jumped out of the groove more times than not. I felt like the table was putting up a fight. No problemo, just keep sawing. 1/4th of an inch is easy right?

Um, no. Not so much. Finish cutting all four legs, stand the table up and it wobbled. Badly. I must've cut a little more off one leg than the three others. I figure no one will notice, so I try to push it under the sink... and it hits something. I bend down to see that the "shallow" bowl part of the sink is ever-so-slightly lower than the lip, so now I have to cut all of the legs again so that the table will fit under the sink bowl part.

Lay the table on its side, saw about 1/2 inch off each leg, eye-balling it, because really, how much of a fluke was it that I didn't get it right the first time, and I'm sure I'm doing it about the same each time now, so no worries. Hand is hurting like hell, baby is kicking full-out, table keeps scootching on the kitchen floor, sawdust is in eyes, face, hair, nose and mouth, but this is NO problem, because am almost done and will have table thingy under sink and no more stabby corners.

Stand table up. Table wobbles like a motherfucker. Am seriously not happy. Figure fuck it, doesn't matter, just going to go under the sink, so start to shove it under.

Doesn't fit. Don't know what happened, but the lowest portion of the shallow bowl was not so fucking shallow after all.

Table is laughing at me.

Lay table on its side. Saw table legs. Blister on hand bursts. Sawdust now in everything, including uterus. Baby punting it back out. Stand table up. Wobbles way worse than before. Now it's really noticeable, and even though it now fits under the sink, it's extremely lopsided, so much so that anything inside will all roll to the right. Looks like a drunk built it.

Lay motherfucking table on its motherfucking side. Get the saw from hell. Try measuring. Hands hurt so much when sawing, realize that I can't hold it steady on a straight line. Realize it's already crooked, even with the measuring.

Decide that no stupid stabby table is going to beat me. Nosirreebob. Take saw, cut all the motherfucking legs completely off. Table now sits flat on kitchen floor. Drawers are one inch above floor, too low for big ass pregnant self to bend down to open to get anything out of them anyway. Kick table half-ass under the sink, throw the saw down in the middle of the pile of leg parts and saw dust and storm off to the other room to see what other furniture I can mangle before Carl gets home.

Carl walks in the door. Takes one look at the table (now on floor), the parts and the sawdust and said, "Would you like to go out and get some ice cream?"

I married a very very smart man.

a ghost story

Not long after we were first married, we bought a house from the elderly daughter of the woman who died there. The old (now dead) woman had been a friend of my husband's grandmother. The house was across the street from Granny and run-down and in desperate need of everything, but it was cheap and we could (sort of) afford it.

The previous owner had died in the master bedroom (and if you had seen the really large, really ugly, and I mean horribly ugly flowered wallpaper in that room, and learned she'd been bedridden there... well, I'm sure staring at those flowers would kill anyone.) When the daughter sold it to us, she was delighted that we were going to be having a baby soon because her mother had wanted to have many children and had not been able to and her one daughter hadn't been able to have any, either. It tickled the daughter that there would be children laughing there -- she thought her mother would have loved knowing that.

Immediately, odd things happened in the house, but I chalked it up to it being an old house. Things fell in the other room, things moved from room to room when I had been the only one home during the day, etc., but to tell you the truth, I didn't pay any attention to it. I assumed I'd forgotten where I put things or the things that had fallen had been set precariously and, you know, gravity works. There was no such thing as "ghosts" and I never even contemplated the concept.

After Luke was born, the frequency of odd things happening in the house increased, though I still didn't think too much of it. I did notice that when I'd walk into the living room, the rocking chair the owner had left for me... was rocking on its own. It did that fairly often. I moved it from spot to spot to spot, convinced there was something about the uneven old floors which was causing it to rock as I walked across the room. Nothing helped. It kept rocking.

Several times when Luke would wake up crying in the middle of the night (which he did often -- he suffered badly from colic) and I would stumble from exhaustion towards his room, he would stop crying suddenly and sort of sound happy. Every one of those times when I got to his door, I could have sworn Carl's grandmother was leaning over his crib, soothing him. Only Granny wasn't at our house, since it was usually two a.m. or somesuch, and I would blink and step toward the bed and no one was there and Luke would start crying again, and I was certain I was in an exhaustion-stupor and hallucinating or dreaming. And I probably was. That child didn't sleep for nine months, and I was completely worn out.

One day Luke was more fussy than usual and the only thing that hushed him was me holding him and walking with him, and I was so tired and he was so cranky, I was in tears. The rocking chair just kept rocking faster and faster and finally I turned to it and said, "Would you PLEASE STOP? You're making me a nervous wreck."

And the damned thing stopped. No kidding, just stopped rocking.

I felt my scalp go all tingly and my heart raced and I sort of froze there a moment. Luke hushed and looked toward the rocker and we stood a long time. Finally, he started fussing again and I went back to pacing in the same spot, keeping an eye on the rocker, sure that since I was pacing the rhythm of my movement would make the rocker start back up again, but it didn't.

I thought about all the times I'd seen the old woman and knew without being able to explain it that if there was someone there, she was trying to help but just didn't really know how. Without making a bit of rational sense, I turned back toward the rocker and apologized for shouting at her. I said, "You can rock now. I'm okay."

It started rocking. Slowly, easily, not abrupt and rough, but it rocked.

I saw her on several more occasions and things kept moving and more than one person thought they'd seen Granny in the other room when they visited even though she wasn't there at that specific time, but I never tried to explain. I was pretty certain if I said anything, people would assume I was not fit to take care of Luke, so I kept it to myself all those years. Carl occasionally saw something, too, but he never really thought about it, I think. Like me in the beginning, he assumed he was tired or that his walking across the floor had caused that thing to fall two rooms over or the chair to rock or whatever.

Years later, when Luke was six, we moved and I took the rocker with me. I have to admit, I really sort of hoped she would come with the rocker to our new house because I had gotten used to her silent presence, and honestly, I always felt like she was looking after the kids. Several times when Luke had been sick in the middle of the night with a fever and not making any noise, something fell in my room waking me up. (We didn't have pets inside at that time.) On more than one occasion, Luke was certain Granny had gone to see him in the middle of the night and of course when I asked her, she hadn't done that. (Granny could barely walk across the street and she was blind in one eye -- she wouldn't have tried to negotiate it in the middle of the night.)

I have to say I was kinda bummed when the rocker no longer rocked by itself at the next house (built very much like the first and from the same era, same kind of floors). But time moved on and I forgot all about it. Granny died and my sister-in-law moved into her old house and one day she commented about the family that had bought our old house.

They were abruptly moving out. The woman was convinced the house was haunted and not in a pleasant way. She was hysterical and upset and would not set foot back in that house. The next door neighbor said that she had heard the mother and father arguing visciously on more than one occasion and screaming at the kids, and apparently that's when the freakish ghost-type of things would happen. Things fell, something went flying at the dad one time with no one there to throw it when he was yelling at the kids and the mom just wanted out. They sold the house at a great loss just to get the hell out of there.

I laughed. My sister-in-law wondered out loud if I had ever had experience with a ghost there and I told her yeah, but she'd liked us.

When the next family moved in, (and I was told the family leaving said nothing about the ghost to them), they commented to my sister-in-law that the house was haunted, but they liked her. They had deduced it was an old woman (apparently several people have seen her like we had.) They had small children and seemed to be generally happy, and I felt relieved that our ghost had some new children to love. I hope that trend continues.

brilliant ideas

Every once-in-a-while, I surpass even myself with my brilliance, at which point the world really does stop on its axis and pay tribute. (What? You didn't get the memo?) Ahem.

One of the more clear and shining moments of this brilliance occurred right after I had given birth to my youngest son and the oldest, Luke, was almost four. The event in question was Halloween Trick-or-Treat, something I dreaded every year. I didn't so much mind the Treating (there was never any tricking from our household), nor did I so much mind the sugar high for the next couple of days, partially because I was busy filching the best of the chocolates anyway and barely noticed if I had to pull the child off the ceiling.

I dreaded the costume decision.

I had no idea a four-year-old could be as grumpy and bossy as an 80-year-old CEO, but he managed it, and became particularly difficult when having to decide upon a costume.

He was creative. His ideas changed daily. And given that we really had zero extra money for purchasing anything he might have wanted, it really boiled down to my non-sewing imagination to pull off something resembling whatever it was he wanted to be.

The year before, I had managed to con him into being a Karate guy (my brother teaches Karate, so it was easy), and he was quite pleased. I sensed from the daily ponderings that I was not going to have a nice repeat.

The entire time I was giving birth and then recuperating at home, Luke was plotting what he would be that year, and none of it sounded easy. I tried to convince him of several more "do-able" things (why don't kids want to be ghosts anymore? why? Cut two holes in a ratty white sheet and voila, done. But noooooooo.)

The day loomed, my post partem recuperation was inching along, thankfully Jake slept enough so that I wasn't entirely homicidal, and Luke still hadn't made up his mind. Then he decided the day before that he didn't want to go trick-or-treating. He wanted to stay home and give out the candy.

I knew there was no way in hell that kid was going to let me off that easily.

I kept suggesting other costume ideas that he might like... cowboy... a puppy (we had ears from a school costume)... a fisherman (hey, I was desperate and we had rods and tackle). Nada.

The day of trick-or-treat loomed, and we went to my mother-in-law's house to help her give out the candy. And about ten minutes before the actual trick-or-treating started, Luke was completely broken-hearted. He wanted to go. Of course, we had no costume and we weren't even at our house where I knew what resources we had to make something.

It was then that I had my most brilliant idea.

He could go as the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. I found a funnel and wrapped it in aluminum foil and then turned to Luke and started wrapping him.

Yes, I wrapped my child in aluminum foil.

I plead post partem hormones.

Once I had him wrapped, thoroughly (with Carl in the background trying to say ever-so-diplomatically that maybe that wasn't such a great idea, only to freeze immediately when I gave him the death glare because that kid was going to have a costume, by god, if I had to kill people to do it)(I may have not been feeling well)... and then we realized, as tightly as I had wrapped him... he couldn't walk.

Do you know how much fun it is to take a four-year-old trick-or-treating when he can't walk and can't move because every time he moved, the aluminum foil... tore. Yes, I was brilliant. I forgot how easily the damned foil ripped from the tube. So every time Luke bent, lifted a leg, anything, he ripped. And what did I do? Did I say to myself, "Self, maybe this isn't such a wonderful idea. Maybe if we'd have had silver spray paint and old clothes, that might have worked, but this? Not so much. Think of something else."

No. No I did not. I discovered that my mother-in-law had a couple of brand-spanking-new tubes of aluminum foil in her kitchen and I grabbed them and shoved Luke out of the front door, Carl followed carrying the baby, and I made him go up to every door and trick-or-treat. When he looked like he was going to start crying, I reminded him that the Tin Man rusted and he dried right up. Every time he came back with the candy, I wrapped and patched that damned aluminum foil (without taking the previous layer off) until Luke was this five-foot-square block of silver walking to the doors. Half of the people couldn't hear the "trick-or-treat" from the rustle of the aluminum foil.

At some point, Carl realized I was eyeing the last of the first tube and about to open the second one when he simply picked Luke up and started carrying him to the door. We maybe did a few more houses at that point and went home.

I thought it was quite successful. (Post partem delusions.)(That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

To this day, Luke will not use aluminum foil for anything. He was here rummaging around in the cabinets looking for something to cover some left-over birthday cake and I suggested the aluminum foil and he started shaking, kinda scary, and said, "NO!" rather loudly and I think he may have even started twitching.

Other than that, he's quite normal.

(Well, except that if you tiptoe up behind him and crinkle aluminum foil and say "Boo!" he will hit the ceiling and stay there.)

(Not that I've ever done that.)

Every year afterward? He picked out a costume waaaaaaaaaaay ahead of time and it was always something we could easily pull together. Imagine that.

interactive metronome

If you have ADD / ADHD or you know someone who does -- ADULT OR CHILD, here's a new therapy that has worked wonders for our youngest son. (If your child has neurological or motor rehabilitation needs, go to this link instead.) (I am in no way affiliated with this; we simply benefited tremendously.)

Know who else is doing this? Some major sports players because it increases their focus, their sequencing skills, their timing, their coordination and thus, their game. Our interactive metronome therapist said several universities are starting to sign up their sports teams.

Four weeks ago, when I first insisted our son try the therapy, he went very begrudgingly. Very. When the therapist asked him why he was there, his answer? "Because my mom pays for my gas and I have to do this."

Four weeks later? I asked him how he felt about it, and he said this. (He's 18.)

"If anyone has the chance to do this therapy, they should do it. No doubt about it, it's made a big difference to me--a huge difference already."

I was floored.

They tested him prior to starting the therapy to see if he was even a candidate for it. The tests were math and reading tests on a computer where they can measure not only correct responses, but response time, sequencing, comprehension. Four weeks later, after doing the therapy, they re-tested him.

He had a dramatic 60% improvement.

He ended up doing much better at the exercises than his therapist had been able to do when she took the tests (multiple times) during her training. (Which tickled him.) And even though he noticed a big difference in the classroom, I've noticed a significant difference in loads of little things, like him not flying off the handle so easily, being able to reason with him, even when he's angry or frustrated, him being angry and frustrated far less often and even when he isn't pleased with something, being able to keep it in perspective. We've also noticed that we can give him much more complex sequencing tasks and feel more confident that he has them all without resorting to either writing everything down or reminding him a hundred times.

It was frustrating for me to watch him be so aggravated with the world because he really did forget things or get distracted in the middle of it and forget to go back to it or go do the next thing in the order he'd planned. And this was even for stuff he really wanted to do, so it wasn't him being rebellious. It harmed him more than us, and it was painful to watch because I understood it was something he had no control over. Meds helped temporarily, but he hated the way they made him feel, and while they may have helped him focus, they didn't help resolve the underlying problem

Even he is impressed with how much less he forgets to do things or is able to stay focused. I'm just thrilled that something worked.

My understanding it that once you've done this therapy (either 12 sessions or 15 sessions, depending, I think, on what your insurance will pay), you shoudn't ever have to do it again. If your insurances pays for speech therapy, it should pay for this. (I have no idea why it's listed under speech therapy because it really has absolutely nothing to do with speech and they in no way work with anything related to speech, but there ya go, the wonderful world of insurance.) Our insurance paid for 100% of everything after our deductible, which was way better than I had expected.

A major thank you to Tamar who found this therapy and sent me the link and encouraged me to learn more about it. The renowned Dr. Greenspan has endorsed it, so Google him and you'll see why that's impressive.

You can read on the link above exactly what it is and how it works, but be aware of this -- while the exercises may look simple or hokey in their demo? In reality, they are complex and difficult and we were surprised by that. However, they start very slowly and simply and work their way up in difficulty / complexity, so it's not something to scare anyone off... just don't blow it off based on their demo.

birthdays

Eighteen years ago, I was two and a half weeks past my due date and had given up ever actually having the kid. I was pretty sure he had decided to take up residency and not pop out until college, I was so huge. My mom had decided that she wanted me to have the baby on the weekend because she had the weekend off, and if it waited all the way until the next Monday, she'd be stuck at work and unable to help. In order to facilitate that, she took me shopping at the local mall. It was rather amazing how every time we needed something, wouldn't you know it, it was on the other side of the mall. I must have walked three billion miles that day, to the absolute horror of every clerk in there. They'd see me walking in looking like I was about to give birth to a house, and they'd freak out. I've never had such good service; everyone just wanted to make sure I got whatever I wanted and got out of there in record time lest I go into labor right there.

Hour and miles later, we went back to my mom's. Carl was working on the house and had it slightly torn up and wanted to get it cleaned up before I got back. When I was lying down, I kept feeling odd. Uncomfortable but not in any pain. I stood... and my water broke. The excessive amount of walking had done its trick.

I waddled out to where my mom and dad were sitting on the back porch and informed my dad that my water had broken, which meant he was going to have to drive me to the hospital.

What I hadn't realized was that long ago, when my dad was a rookie cop, he'd gotten a call from a woman whose water had broken while she was driving on the interstate. She'd pulled over (bad contractions) and by the time he'd gotten there, she was having the baby, and he'd had to deliver it. I barely had uttered "water" and "broke"... they were hovering in the air right above my head, I swear, when my dad paled to ghostly white, shot straight up in the air and made it to the phone in light speed.

My parents live in a rural area outside of the city, and the hospital where I was pre-admitted was not only in town, but towards the south side. It was easily a good hour drive there on a medium traffic day. My dad thought he could arrange an emergency escort by the local cops, but they asked him how far apart were my contractions, and when I said I wasn't having any, they told him then I was obviously having false labor and to wait until I was actually in labor to call them.

My dad came out and explained to me why I wasn't having the baby yet. I countered (again) about water, breaking, forcing the whole birth thing whether there were any actual contractions or not. He stood there and looked at me with this expression that I was just doing this to annoy him and if he waited it out a moment, I'd change my mind and let him off the hook. My mom said, "Unless you want to deliver it, we'd better go."

I swear to god, we made the hour trip in 9 minutes flat. I wish I was exaggerating. My brother happened to pull into the driveway just as we were leaving. My dad shouted to him that I was having the baby and to follow us to the hospital. My brother, who apparently inherited my dad's inability to think during birth crises spun his truck around and followed us -- his bumper practically locking onto ours with the suction of a nuclear powered vacuum. Which wouldn't have normally been so bad, except that most of the way there was a curvy, two-lane road which was notoriously busy during that time of day and my dad was going to get me to the hospital because he was NOT going to have to deliver his daughter's baby if he had to make the car fly, and he would pass people IN CURVES and my brother, who knew exactly where the hospital was, stayed on my dad's bumper because if I was going to give birth in the car, he wanted to be there to be traumatized with the rest of us.

I was in the front seat with my dad and I had a white-knuckled grip on the dash and I kept squealing for my dad to slow down and trying to wave my brother off (this was before cell phones), but he'd just wave back, my dad would hear me squeal and accellerate. We got to the major highway the hospital was on, and both lanes were completely filled with bumper to bumper traffic. My dad had completely lost all sense of time and space and instead of hitting the shoulder and zipping up to the hospital, he got on the center line and started blowing the horn, trying to make people move out of the way. Some people did (of course, because he was a lunatic) and others tried flipping him off, but I think they looked into their rearview mirrors, saw the complete and total insanity and decided that he just might drive over them, so they grudgingly gave way.

We wheeled into the emergency entrance and the orderlies took me inside, straight back to one of the prep rooms. And when the nurse came to take my blood pressure, she freaked. It was so high (from the ride), I was about to stroke out. It took me an hour to calm down enough before they could even think about giving me an epidural.

Five hours later, with virtually no painful contractions, out popped Jake. Nine pounds, two ounces, the easiest delivery in the entire planet. (In fact, he popped out so quickly, the doctor had drop down to catch him. I am not making that up. I thought he'd dropped the baby on the floor, but Carl, who'd gotten there by that point and was standing back there with the doctor, said it was like a football player snagging the ball just before it smacked the ground.)

Jake nursed about thirty minutes later, slept like a dream and was generally the easiest, happiest baby in the whole world. I had no ideas babies could actually sleep. (Luke hadn't slept the first nine months.)

I can't believe that same little football just walked through here, all 5'8", 165 lbs. of him, gorgeous, funny, sweet, smart, and did I mention sweet? I cannot imagine my life without either of my two boys.

Happy birthday, Jake. We love you bunches and bunches. (infinity)

more fragile

The rest of the story. K's family has now ensconsed him in a hospital for therapy. They are concerned (and I believe, rightly so) about him harming himself.

Jake is exceedingly stressed about this whole event. It's triggered enormous grief flashbacks to when his other friend was killed and he slept not a wink last night. He should have gone to his college classes today, but he's finally fallen asleep and we'll just find a way to deal with the missed work.

It's never easy with kids, is it.

fragile

Last night late, Jake called to tell me that one of his friends, K, just totaled out his car. K walked away pretty much unscratched from what amounted to a completely crushed car. He was doing 110 on the Interstate. (He told Jake the cops thought he was only doing 90, but he admitted how fast he was going.) The thing is, Jake has ridden with him in the past. The passenger seat? Completely obliterated. Back seat? The same. Jake almost always travels around in his own truck, thankfully, but there are times they'd all jump in one car, particularly K's car since he had all the fancy stereo equipment. His roommate at LSU (also one of Jake's closest friends) normally rides around with him. Jake or the other friend, Dan, would be dead right now if they had decided to hang out with K yesterday.

Jake seemed shook up about it. He's already had one very dear friend get killed in a car wreck (when someone else was driving badly and ran into him), so he's aware of mortality moreso than K. (The currently wrecked friend didn't know the one who died.) It makes me furious to think this kid was happily taking chances with everyone's lives -- including those people on the interstate where he was driving. What scares the hell out of me is that he's the kind of kid who never learns. He sloughs off anything that anyone tries to tell him for his own good. He's rude to his parents (who still coddle him, but they're learning not to... too late, unfortunately). He tried to be rude to me one day when he was here and that got nipped in the bud so fast, I think I scared him. (Good.)

I know he has no idea what he's done or the damage he could have done.

a new theory

I have now become firmly convinced that when the majority of the male gender is young, probably sometime prior to starting grade school, a genie or pixie or evil imp appears to them to impart THE TRUTH. They are sworn to keep this secret, I believe, but there just cannot be any other explanation, and I have figured it out. Yes, indeedy, they are convinced that if they go through a house and shut ANY DOOR WHATSOEVER, their penis will fall off. Immediately. kerplop, right there on the floor. It is the only explanation that makes sense, because I have three guys who go through this house looking for things, needing to retrieve things, and they open doors and they never touch them again. Sixteen billion open doors in the house, never occurs to anyone of them to close one. They will SMACK INTO the open door, stumble back, grabbing their head, side, arm, leg, whatever, moan and groan in a much greater proportion than the injury and still walk away from the door without closing it. They will claim that they have cleaned a room and claim that it is amazingly wonderfully completely clean (translation: they dug out maybe one pile of crap and piled it all into another pile), and I will bet money they have left every door open in their room. The only exception to this rule that I have been able to see is the car door. That, they can somehow manage to close. Maybe because the penis is safely inside the doors, I dunno.

finally, to exhale

I think I have been waiting for this moment for years and years. In fact, I'm sure I have. It is such a simple moment, really -- the start of college for the youngest son. The oldest has one year (or so) left (depending on if a key course is offered next spring or not) and he seems pleased with this last year or so of school, feeling the fever of a bigger world to conquer just beyond, and the youngest one started college yesterday, all possibilities before him.

When you've worked so hard with one son to get past learning obstacles, everything about normal high school feels like a deadline, a lead weight against the soul, something that always feels like it's a measurement cut deep into wounds. But Jake started college yesterday, taking a full load, having gotten extremely lucky and gotten a great schedule. He seemed very positive about it when he came in afterward yesterday, and in addition to the course load being something he felt he could handle, the classes weren't so huge that he felt lost. Critical too (to Jake) was that there were a "lot of pretty girls" going to school there, and he grinned mischieviously when he said, "Mom. I have to start working out again." When you see the oldest son worry and worry over what he's going to do with his life, and worry that he may not live up to his potential, and you see that in spite of his worries, he already is... it's good. You know he'll see it, soon enough.

There's a moment you don't think you're ever going to come to as a parent, and even when you're here, you realize it's fleeting, that it's not marked so permanently that you won't move backwards and fowards a few times over it before it feels "real" -- but it's that moment when you realize that they have a lot of possibility before them and they're basically on the right path and there are no specific external deadlines to make us all crazy. They have time to continue to grow up, and at their own pace, and they have the ability to choose things they want to do and try them out, and they can dress and look and be whatever they want. There aren't any reasons for anyone to be locked into anything yet -- it's a world full of hope and promise. I've been a mom long enough to know it will not last (at least, not yet), that there will be problems and obstacles and despair and triumphs, because really, that is life. It's a feeling as if I've been holding my breath for Luke (for 21 years) and Jake (17) and I can exhale. But I savor this moment, this quiet day when things are very very good for both boys and there is this feeling that they will both be okay, no matter what.

monster house...

My brother's going to be on Discovery Channel's Monster House... but with a very cool twist.

Typically, Monster House has homeowners who've volunteered their homes for a remodel, and the Monster House people pick a theme (which gets approved by the homeowners) -- then they take one week, house the homeowners in a Coachman RV in front of the house, but where they can't see what's being done, and do the interior house in the theme. You can click on some of the episodes on that web site linked above and see some of the before / afters / descriptions of the houses and the themes.

There are usually five workers picked to do the actual construction, and they get paid a sum (I think the general amount is $1,000) for the week, plus if they make the deadline, they win a bunch of tools.

All of which is kinda fun in a flashy reality show / contest / HGTV sort of way, but this time, there's a very important twist -- this time, the show has been contacted by a charity which gives wishes for kids who are very seriously ill. In this particular case, there is a local boy who is suffering from leukemia, and all he wanted was a fort with a glass roof because his greatest love is to go outside and look through his telescope at the stars... but he can't do it here because of the mosquitos and bug bites because the chemo he's on makes him very susceptible to any type of infection, no matter how small -- even a bug bite -- and he'll be on the chemo for the next four years. His family couldn't build (or afford or maybe just didn't have the know-how) a fort with a glass ceiling.

Well, his mom got the national charity involved and they contacted Monster House, who just came down last week and filmed the build -- a huge fort in the back yard with many multi-levels, trap doors, an interior slide, and a telescope which was donated (along with the computer software to operate it remotely from his "control tower" and a plasma TV to see whatever the telescope is pointed toward... and this is a very impressive telescope). My brother had heard about the tryouts for the show at the last minute and since he happened to be nearby, he went for it. He's got alot of years of construction experience, plus he is super kid-oriented in that he's a fourth degree Master in Tang Soo Do and has his own school and over the years, has taught probably thousands of kids. He was picked for the build (which meant giving up going to the national Tang Soo Do Karate championships where he's the defending champion from last year, but in his heart, it was no contest).

The build went well -- they met the deadline (so the guys and one woman doing the build got nice prizes), but in this case, it was awesome seeing the family and the boy's response.

His episode airs November 22nd on the Discovery Channel. (His only regret / concern was that in one particular part of the build, the guy who designed the whole impressive thing -- and wow, it is pretty stunning, I promise -- measured where some concrete had to be poured, marked the area with paint and then left when the cameras turned on. Mike, my brother, thought it wasn't in the right place, and he adjusted it a little, but not having the plans, he didn't want to adjust too much... but it turned out that it was definitely in the wrong spot and they ended up having to break out the concrete and move it. It's going to look on camera like it was his fault for not putting it in the right place, but he was following the off camera instructions. I hope they don't edit it to make him look at fault, because he's talented and very cool, and there were a lot of alpha males on the set... I could see the show people manipulating something like that just to create conflict and "good" TV.)

Anyway, y'all watch it -- he's the one in the Zachary Karate t-shirts. (I'll post a reminder when it's closer.)

puppy lust

There was this moment the other night which happened, and every time it happens, I am somehow lulled into a wonderful state of denial where I think everything is OK and PEACEFUL and will always stay that way... and that moment involved having actual quiet. No phones, no rush here or there, no crazy-making deadlines, no evil villains hovering over my shoulder, just quiet. And in those moments, I bask and relax and then I say to myself, "Wow. I think it's going to be calm from now on."

Cue: insanity.

Because it never manages to actually be calm, and I'm starting to wonder if I heard about this mythical "calm" in some sort of brainwashing program I must've paid for somewhere along the line, because I can't say that I've actually had calm yet. It is the holy grail, the lotto, and it's always just out of my reach, always won by someone somewhere in Iowa, like they have things to be riled up about in Iowa.

So. Brief moment of quiet, and then my youngest son calls with one of those phone calls that you don't see coming, but makes you realize that this is only the very tip of the not-calm volacano of "Things Your Child Can Do To Make You Nuts."

Jake, (who was out of town with his dad on a construction project), called and said, "Hey Mom! Guess what?"

In the history of language, somewhere there should be a footnote of sentences that should shoot fear into your very soul. They are, in no specific order:

"Here's the red phone, Mr. President."
"Well how are you supposed to pronounce 'nuclear'?"
"I'm afraid there's a tiny bit more damage than we expected when we gave you that estimate."
and
"Hey Mom! Guess what?"

Nothing good ever follows any of those sentences, and I gripped the phone with dread.

"What?" I say, secretly wondering if I have time to get a passport.

"You know how I always wanted a puppy?"

"What always? You already have a dog."

"But I always wanted a puppy. One of my own."

"This is your dog here. She's slept in your room from the time we had her."

"Mom. I've always wanted a real dog. DeeOhGee isn't really a real dog."

"What is she, a duck?"

"She doesn't bark. And she's scared of everything. I want a real dog." (She's a rescue, and the first time she barked was a year after we'd had her, and she scared herself so badly, she ran and hid under my bed.)

"What do you mean 'real'?" (I should have known better than to ask this.)

"A pit bull. And mom! Guess what! They have some pit bull puppies for sale right here -- and they're only $50!" (My blood pressure hit six billion over 23,786, thankyouverymuch.)

"No. No way, we are not getting a puppy. Especially not a puppy that will grow up into something that will eat the cat, possibly the other dog and god knows what else."

"But it's only $50!!! And I'll take care of him! I promise!"

"Exactly when will you do that? You are never home."

"I'll stay home now! Because I'll be taking care of my puppy!"

"Riiiiiggggggggght. And what about college?"

"Oh, I'll only be gone four hours a day! And I'll be home all the rest of the time."

"You have four one-hour classes, a one hour break in between and a half hour drive to and back. That's six hours."

"Yeah, but I'm off Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I'll be home all day then."

"So I'll just tell the brand new puppy that he'll have to wait until you're home on Tuesdays and Thursdays to pee. And he'll have to hold it all weekend while you're hanging with all of your friends. I'm sure that'll work great."

"You just don't want me to have a puppy."

"That's pretty much what the word 'no' meant, last time I checked."

"But it's only $50! And I'll be moving out the next semester, so then I can take him with me to the apartment."

"Fine. When you move out, you can buy a puppy."

"But then I'll be home and do you know what they cost there? $650. And this is the only kind of puppy I've ever wanted. Ever."

"So, save up. Because we're not getting a puppy."

"What if I get him and bring him home and then if you really don't like him, I could sell him to somebody there for $650. And I'll make $600!"

"How much you wanna bet me he doesn't have papers?"

"Papers?"

A few minutes later, I got off the phone and called his dad, who assured me that he would go out to the Wal-Mart, where apparently these adorable-but-cheap puppies were being sold by someone in the parking lot. He assured me that when he got through with them, I would no longer be the bitch that ate all of happiness. When he got back to the hotel, he called me, laughing, saying everything was fine and Jake was cool with not getting the puppy. I asked him how on earth he had performed this miracle, and he related this story.

He said, "I stood out in the parking lot, talking with a lot of other parents who were also being shanghaied by their kids and we started discussing how much work puppies really were. And then I said to Jake, 'You want to know what it's like to have a puppy? I'll tell you. First, you walk into that Wal-Mart and go straight for the little restaurant and get you a 44oz drink and drink it all down in one standing. Then you hunt out the cutest girl to wait on you and you look at her with your adorable eyes and ask her if she'll take you to the hardware section, and when you get there, you ask her to wait for you, while you roam around, clueless, and then you finally pick up a claw hammer. Then you go back out, looking all cute and everything, and ask her to take you to the furniture department, and when you get there, you ask her to wait. Then you walk around and around the furniture, sniffing it, and when she gets distracted by another customer walking by or the phone or some announcement and she has her back turned, you start beating the crap out of the nearest piece of furniture, splintering and shredding it. When she turns around, shocked and horrified, you keeping smacking it a couple of more times until she shouts at you, then you drop the hammer and try to look as innocent as possible, like it couldn't possibly have been you to upset her so much, and when she shouts at you again, that big drink will kick in right about that moment and you just start peeing right there, half on the furniture, half on the floor, and then you look up at her and bat your eyelashes and ask her for a date." That, I told him, is what it's like to have a puppy every day until they get old enough to really start training, and even then, it's still like that until they get the hang of that training, and if you can't be consistent with their training? It's like that for a lot longer. And all of the other parents were laughing and nodding, and even the woman trying to sell the dogs was laughing and nodding and Jake decided that maybe he better wait."

I really love my husband.

(But that calm thing? Ain't ever gonna happen. I demand a refund.)

when you lose what you are

I remember one time not so long ago when I had realized I had lost something of myself that I could never get back. I cannot explain what it was without telling other people's stories (and nothing anyone else did, just my own hell), but it hurt beyond what I thought I could comprehend, to the point that I found myself sitting on the floor of my closet, simply in pain, beyond tears. Sitting in the closet, lest anyone hear me and feel the need to ask what was wrong, sitting for hours, hiding, really just wanting to be dead and not quite knowing what to do next to move on, to put that one foot in front of another, to breathe in and then out again. I think one of the most difficult types of losses that a person has to deal with is when there is a loss of self-identity, of something that you identify as being you or a part of who you are in this world, and when that loss happens, it's like a sudden earthquake of the soul -- no warnings, no mercy, ripping tears in the soul, upheaval, despair, destruction. The landscape changes on the inside so completely, you keep looking in the mirror to see if the fissures are showing, and it's shocking that they aren't. I think it would be somehow easier for us if they did show, at least a little while, so that people walking along and having to deal with you could see you all zig-zagged, broken and stitched back together crazy sideways, sort of limping along and they would know to just be gentle, just be quiet, that's a broken person right there, don't move too fast or make loud noises because everything could shift again and do more harm. And just like after an earthquake, a 7.1 on the Richter scale, there's no way to put everything back just right again. Sometimes, the losses are too great for anything to be rebuilt, and sometimes, the rebuilding is slow and tedious and painful and eventually, maybe years later, you can look back over the area and be surprised not to still see rubble, and then sometime after that, you're suprised that when you look at it, you never really still think of the rubble and you catch yourself short in that moment and wonder if that means you've somehow healed. You're almost afraid to think you have, because will that mean you start taking it for granted, will that mean that you're not as alert, as ever ready for the little tremblings of when you may be fooling yourself, of when you may be about to discover another serious loss? It's a hard place to live, in that earthquake worn soul.

I made it through that time mostly due to friends who loved me through it. There was some talk, but mostly distraction, and lots of laughter, eventually. There were other things too, like finding funny people on the web who'd lived as hard as I had, maybe through other things, rarely through the same sort of things, and they spoke with a surety of who they still were, who they were becoming, of having survived and still managed to find the humor in the cracks. It took me a very long time, but I started to learn how to define myself, not by what I wasn't, but by what I was, although that sometimes works only on Tuesday, Thursdays, and occasionally, Saturday afternoons. When I read entries like this one from getupgrrl, it rips my heart to pieces for her. It's the kind of pain that you know you can't help or fix or advise or even distract from, and you can't shoulder it for someone else. But it makes me cry, it makes my chest hurt and my throat tighten and it bothers me that there's nothing I can do to show her how her writing has been a joy in my life, and how unfair all this sorrow is for someone so clearly good and funny and warm in her connection to the world. And as little as it is (and I know it is very little), I want to say to her thank you, because even though right now she's defining herself by what she's lost and what she isn't, which is only natural and necessary and breaks my heart that she's having to go through this, I hope she keeps in the back of her mind what she is and what she has and what she's given. She's made me laugh on way more occasions than I can count, which has rescued me on days that would have otherwise been too bleak for words. Maybe if we're all lucky, her reaching out to the world with her story will rescue her right back.

flying time

My oldest son has flown to Cancun for a vacation with his friends. I'm not terribly happy about this. He's going to fry in the sun. Paper would look tan next to him. I'm not kidding. He also doesn't like sand. So not a sand person. Got off the airplane, sent me an e-mail five minutes later, griping about the way the sand was already in everything. Five whole minutes in Mexico, and there's already a sand issue. There is also a peso issue, because apparently, pesos do not make sense. I fully expect to get a phone call from the Mexican government in the next couple of days asking me if I would please draw a line at Texas and keep my son on our side of the line. I fully expect him to be complaining in the background about the sand. And the pesos. And also, he doesn't speak Spanish. I'm just praying he doesn't learn the word for "jail" while he's there.

art hop

The "Art Hop" was tonight, with the grand unveiling of The Time Machine, and I have to say, it was a success. I was nervous all day, and then on my way over there, it stormed, so I imagined the worst, since the time machine was outside. It was under a tent, but the rain prevented anyone from being able to get to it or for us to turn on the electricity. When the rain looked like it was going to stop, Carl ran and bought a GFI thingie (something to prevent anyone from being shocked) and plugged it into that and then the time traveling was on.

I learned after my last post that although thousands go through the whole event, probably each shop has a couple hundred or so. We had close to 500 from our best estimates. I got there an hour after it started (I was tense and Carl wanted me to chill out and go later, which was wise), and then there was the rain, and we still had a big crowd. People loved it... lots of laughter, lots of people going with the whole craziness of it. Then the news came out and taped it and it was on the 10:00 news, which pretty much made Carl's day. Two other people asked if he would do the same thing at their galleries (one in New Orleans) and Caffery's asked him to come back for her next big event in November.

I have lots and lots of photos, and I'm beat, so will post them tomorrow.

graduation

When Luke graduated four years ago, I never actually got to see the graduation part. We were seated in the Centrolplex Theater, which is fairly large and not very good seating (it's not stadium seating), and I was behind two people who were at least nine feet tall with bouffant hair. I thought the zoom lens on the camera would be enough to help me see (and get a photo), and not only did that not help me see, but the photo was gray, since apparently my zoom lens wasn't strong enough and my flash hates me.

So this time, it was going to be different. I had a digital camera with a powerful little zoom lens, and when we got there ("there" being the Pete Maravich Assembly Center with stadium seating), everyone in the family sat up high. They could all see fine. I could not. Did I suffer in silence? No, I did not. I moved the entire three billion people in our family down to the lowest row possible (which was still far above the floor). We were in the "front" row with just a railing between us and a fifteen foot fall, but at least we could see the graduates. Sort of. There were blue caps and gowns and hair, so I suppose some of them may have been grauduates and not some prank by the school system before tossing back out children and taunting us that we would have to keep sending them to school until we begged for mercy. Everyone kept telling me, "Oh, there's Jake! See him! He's waving!" and I would look out over the sea of blue and have no clue which one was my child, which one might possibly be waving in my direction given all the tooing and froing and waving and jumping around they were doing pre-ceremony. Finally, embarrassed, I nodded and just felt like a very bad mom. I mean, what kind o mom doesn't know her own kid at graduation? I didn't know which one was mine in the nursery when he was born, but hey, they were all fat and bald and crying and I was still wonky from birth, so I had an excuse. But he's been here for 17 years now; you'd think I'd have the ability to recognize him in a crowd. But no.

Luckily, I brought a little monocular glass thingie and I used that to find him. Except I was holding the monocular and the camera (right in front of that railing over a 15 foot drop) and the cell phone rang, and it was Jake. So I'm talking to him, using my monocular and camera to try to pick him out of the crowd as he's talking to me and of course, he's down on the floor and can tell I have no clue where he was because I'm aiming said monocular the wrong direction, so he starts messing with me, telling me he's in different places other than where he is. I finally found him, the little rat, and he laughed. I was so happy to have found him, I nearly jumped up and down, but with the dizzy still happening, going over the railing featured prominently in my mind at that point, so I stood still.