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.

The ceremony started, and I don't know quite why people who organize graduation ceremonies think it's best if all of the graduates walk in so slowly that by the time the last one has finally made it to their chair, you could have birthed, schooled and graduated an entire extra child. I kept playing with the digital camera because it wasn't taking photos of the stage area very well -- they were (big surprise), dark and gray. But I realized there was a "landscape" view on the damned thing, which I set, and voila! finally, I was getting the photos and they were well enough lit to tell there were humans in them. I was so excited by this, that when Jake got up there and they called his name, I knew I was going to get a photo. I whooped for joy, promptly smacked the menu button on the camera, which put the menu up and I couldn't get it off and back to the camera part for a couple of seconds... just in time to miss Jake receiving his diploma and I looked up to see him disappear off to stage left.

I'm two for two on the sucky mom thing. Grrrr.

At least he's done and it's over and he's graduated. Whew.

the time machine

Last fall, I was sitting here minding my own business, when Carl came home. He had that look in his eye, the one that said he had brought something home from a job or had stopped at some flea market somewhere and I should probably brace myself. He loves to stop at oddball places, and with him criss-crossing the state occasionally, he has ample opportunity. Sometimes, I don't so much mind -- I have some neat things on my shelves from some of his "finds" and I enjoy that sense of childlike discovery he has for all the little weird things in the world. I'm pretty sure he's not going to grow out of it (he's 44), so you know, I go with the flow. Sometimes, he brings home incredibly strange things which sit on my shelves and people don't quite know what to make of them (which is okay, too, because they are often surprised.) For example, I have these items on my shelves:

That's raw silica; in case you've never seen it up close:

It's the ingredient in cement among other things.

One day he brought home this:

That's salt from the salt domes beneath southern Louisiana. (Yes, there really are gigantic salt domes below the swamps.)

Then there's this:

That's a slice of rail -- from a job -- and the restroom sign below is a flea market find.

You probably won't know what this one is, and I'm rather embarrassed to explain it:

And another view:

(It's the tool used to castrate a bull. I'm not sure why he brought this home.)

So the day last fall when he came in with a grin, I was pretty sure I was in for something odd. When he had me stay in the office so he could hurry out and get the item, and then I heard loud thunking as he dragged it into the kitchen, I knew I was in trouble. He had brought home one of those old-fashioned hair dryers -- you know, the kind women used to sit in at the beauty shops, with the hood that hovered over their heads, blowing out hot air. The chair is black vinyl with gold flecks and the damn thing still worked. He somehow thought I was going to swoon at this one, and I promptly removed it to the garage.

Which did not deter him one bit. Before I knew what had happened, he had started adding onto it. There are wings now, people. And a rudder. And lights. Lots of strange lights. And it now vibrates when you turn it on. There are switches which do strange things. He dubbed it, "The Time Machine" and has had a ball getting people to sit in it. The next thing I know, we were in a local gallery and the owner mentioned this big "art hop" that she was having, and Carl told her that what she needed was the time machine. He started describing it, she was laughing and looking at me to see if he needed to be put away, and before I knew what had happened, she had decided he was right -- she would have the thing at her gallery for its "grand unveiling" as one of the draws to her shop.

Now, I had assumed this was relatively harmless. I keep asking him if he realizes it really is a hair dryer. Secretly, I was hoping that she would at least have ten or twenty people show up to this art hop thing -- I'd really hate to see him disappointed. But realistically, I was bracing myself to console him when Carl went back by the gallery this week to answer the owner's questions and to find out what we need to do to set everything up.

Turns out, this isn't just an art hop for her gallery -- it's a whole mid-town celebration. There are something like twenty galleries and it's the type of event that's advertised in the newspaper, radio and TV. They're expecting thousands of people to go through that gallery. They now want me to take digital photos of anyone who wants a photo in the time machine. There's going to be a tent for the special time machine event, an unveiling and, I'm told, lots of wine. (I suggested that we put up a sign requiring a three drink minimum before they even enter the tent.)

I was going to post a photo here, but he went to Wal-Mart, Michael's and Home Depot last night and bought a few other things to add to the time machine. There's an old-fashioned lunch box (because you know, when you're time traveling, you might want to pack a lunch.) There's a globe. There might even be dry ice.

Be very afraid.

of hearts and hospitals

When you turn into the drive for Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, the red-bricked buildings built maze-like over the years remind you that they've been there for almost forever, and there's a feeling of calm. I don't know if it's because it's designed with courtyards where, when you're inside looking out, you're looking into the thick interlocking branches of white oaks or if it's something about the sheer size of the complex for such a relatively small city that comforts and reassures. Most hospital corridors assail my senses with smells of sterile concoctions or pine-scented freshly mopped floors or that perpetual antiseptic smell of near death, but today, the corridors -- particularly those just off the parking garage -- smelled more like the fresh rain still drizzling outside.

We wound our way to an information desk, asked where the heart patient's families waited while the patients were still in surgery, and then wound our way further along the corridor, zigging right then a quick left and down a long hall until we finally found the private waiting room. We recognized a couple of the people and I worried that we might be intruding -- we're friends of the patient, and didn't really know the family all that well. But the patient is the new partner for the business venture I'd mentioned in entries below and he's been so much a part of our extended family, it seemed the right thing to do, to go and wait and hear how he was.

He had learned a last week that he had to have open heart surgery. A part of his heart had died and somehow, some vein had taken over the responsibility for pumping the blood... which turned out to be so rare, that even the specialist they had flown in had only seen one photo of a heart which had done the same thing. The problem was, it wasn't doing the pumping very well, and his blood pressure kept dropping to near fatal levels, so there was no choice -- it had to be repaired. When Carl talked to him yesterday, he explained that his heart was now as big as a soccer ball. A soccer ball. It's supposed to be about the size of a softball, and it was swelling and working itself to death trying to keep up. The surgeon was going to cut out all of the dead stuff, graft some veins and skin from other areas and essentially rebuild the heart, along with a couple of other things I just didn't quite catch.

We were there in time to hear one report from surgery that everything was going well, and we waited another hour until it was complete and the surgeon came out and spoke to the family. During that hour, there was much laughter and cutting up as the various kids told tales on their dad and some of the crazy things he'd done in his lifetime. Now, I lived with a crazy dad (crazy = southern, ornery, pain-in-the-ass), but their stories made my dad look like he was a laid-back, zen-loving, Prozac-popping zombie, and I was laughing until I had tears. It's nice when you discover you're not the only one from crazy, you know?

At any rate, the surgeon came out an hour later and explained that everything had gone extremely well -- he'd done four by-passes, rebuilt the heart as mentioned, and the couple of other things that still went over my head, but the gist of it was that there was much improvement already in the rate of blood flow and pumping and barring any post-surgery complications, they probably gave him a completely new lease on life.

The walk back out to the car was one of relief and amazement; the things they can do now. Wow. And as we left, there was a short break in the rain.

turning corners

It is the end of an era around here; Jake has taken his last final, has turned in his last book and will graduate on the 17th. My baby is finished with high school. I sit here at my desk, both happy at the moment, and sad. It's been a difficult road for us with his learning obstacles (dysgraphia, ADD), and frustrating for him. I've seen moments when he just couldn't wrap his mind around the unfairness of it all -- there are people in his class who have the common sense and the IQ of a blade of grass, but they memorize well and so do well in school, whereas Jake, with a high IQ, struggles. But that's life, I suppose. There will always be an obstacle of some sort, and he's won this round. On to the next.

I feel a sense of joy and relief that this part of my life is over. No more having to get up super early to make sure that he's up and off to school. He was pretty good about taking care of himself in that manner, and rarely overslept, so it's not like I absolutely had to do that... but old habits die hard and I knew that he did sleep like the dead, so I might as well get up and make sure rather than lie there and wonder if he heard the alarm. Still... not going to do that for college. (What do you want to bet this child tries to take all afternoon classes?) No more worrying about whether or not he's going to make it through school. He will either do okay in college and get a degree, or he won't. I don't think college is for everyone, and have a lot of family and friends who are very successful without college, so it's not necessarily a benchmark of what's going to happen in life.

This is a line drawn in the sand of time marking before and after, marking a moment of transition, of moving on into adulthood. I'm grateful for that line, for the freedom it brings to me to know that we made it this far. I'm sad, too. Because gone is my little boy, the chubby cheeked, big smiling faced imp who regularly crawled into my lap for big hugs, who brought frogs into his room so they could play, who loved to run faster than anyone around him, whose face lit up with joy at the simplest things, like a surprise popsicle on a hot summer day. I wish I could have those memories alive around me, just one more time. To see both boys running into the house or wrestling together, or staking out the perfect place for the perfect fort. I crane my head because I hear something, and it almost sounds like laughter under a blanket tent in their room, and if I turn that corner in the hall, I might have to duck to avoid the (paper) "grenade" lobbed at me, amid one of them laughing and the other one shushing, and then me dropping down, sneaking up on them, and attacking (tickling) them. If I turn that corner, they will still be there, just like that, twelve and eight, having packed a picnic lunch from the kitchen and hauled it all the way to the tent (their bedroom), because they were going to be gone for a very long time. It I turn that corner, they will still want me to sing them to sleep, not yet having decided they were too old for that, or for me reading to them, or simply snuggling. It is the thing about being a mom that people can't really tell you when you start out -- that every time you turn a corner, it vanishes behind you, and one day? One day, you will turn a corner and they will be gone and grown and living their own lives. They don't tell you that, and even if they had, it's too hard to understand until you're sitting at a desk, wondering where the giggling's coming from and you realize, it's just a memory.

wisdom teeth fun

Amanda mentioned Wednesday that she was going to have to go with her husband when he gets his wisdom teeth pulled, which reminded me of when I went with Luke for his. I have never laughed so hard in my entire life. If I had had a camera / DVD recorder there, I would have made a fortune on the recording.

For starters, you have to get a mental picture of Luke as a sandy-blonde kid. Who is somewhat prone to liking to be in control. All. Of. The. Time. (I cannot imagine where he got that from.) (oh, hush.)

So, it was his senior year and he had just finished wrestling in state, where they had all decided to dye their hair blue to show team spirit. Unfortunately, they didn't use anything remotely resembling proper hair coloring (and I was afraid to ask what they did use), but whatever it was, it constantly ran in rivulets down their faces. (And let me tell you, you just do not intimidate the other wrestlers when you look like a melting Smurf. I'm just saying.)

Blue hair. Which would not wash out. Luke decided that he would simply bleach it back blonde prior to going in for his wisdom teeth extraction because by this time, he was tired of looking like Skinny Smurf on Crack, and the blonde dying began. And what do blue and yellow make, boys and girls? If you answered, "Green," then you are one up on my very bright and I swear, he is in college, son.

When we arrived for the wisdom teeth extraction, I was thinking that you just could not get any sillier looking than having green hair. However, afterward, I discovered that yes, indeed, you can. Because I had completely forgotten about the drugs they would be giving him.

They gave him an IV of something to deal with the pain. I do not know what was in the shots that they put in the IV, but whatever it was, Luke apparently could still feel the pain after two entire syringes full of the stuff, so they went ahead and put in a third one. (Luke is not a huge guy. They put in enough pain killer to stop a freight train. You see where this is going.)

The surgery was over rather quickly and the nurse called me back there to sit with Luke; she expected him to be waking up quickly and to not be in any pain because of the IV. I think she thought I would be very concerned and anxious and nervous because you know, this was surgery after all. And I think I was all of those things until I walked into that room and saw him sitting in the chair.

People. His little cheeks were so swollen and puffed out with cotton gauze, he looked like squirrel who had stored all of his nuts and a few of his neighbor's in his cheeks for the winter. A green-haired squirrel. I held a straight face until the nurse left, and I waited for Luke to wake up. Which he did in just a few minutes. His head lolled around, his eyes were sort of going in separate directions (so he looked like a squirrel on crack) and then... he tried to talk. With all of that cotton in his mouth, he was so freaked out by the fact that he could see double of everything, he just had to talk. Except... well, muffled cracked up squirrel, mouth full of nuts, green hair.

The nurse stepped in and started explaining the things I would need to do when he got home and he was steadily trying to talk, trying to make consonate sounds around the gauze and over-emphasizing each one, as if more enthusiasm would help me to understand. He kept motioning to the TV, groaning out, "dooooooooo... doooo uhhhhh emmmmmm," and the nurse was busy trying to talk and then he lolled his head and looked at me and then jumped backward, startled, fear in his eyes because now there were two... of me, and he kept twisting his head, cutting his eyes sideways trying to figure out which one was real. He was reaching out for the wrong one when I just lost it, and started giggling so hard, I had to ask the nurse to give me a minute because I just couldn't listen to the instructions.

It got worse as we tried to get him to leave. Because he saw two of everything (two thresholds to step over, two curbs, two car doors) and he keep holding up two fingers, bellowing out around his cotton, "dooooooooooooooooooooooooo" and every step he took was a GIANT step, feet lifted as high as his knee to step over whatever it was he thought he saw on the floor.

In the car, he was so freaked out by the fact that there were two of everything around us, he kept wanting to take the steering wheel because he was certain we were going to crash. Which got funnier because he kept grabbing at the wrong wheel. And trying to explain, the entire time.

We somehow got behind a bus, which really confused him because apparently, the way the images overlapped, the "bus" he saw was only the solid middle part of the over-lapping images and that middle part wasn't big enough to hold a human.... so when it stopped and let some people off, his arms flailed out to the sides as if he was trying to steady his world and he somehow said (around the guaze), "Dose are weally (really) skinny people!"

I almost never got him from the car into the house by ourselves because he was high-stepping every step and landing each foot three or four feet in front, almost doing a split because he'd misjudged the distance and he wasn't entirely sure that the evil me wasn't taking him into some pit seven layers below hell. At one point, later, when he was supposed to be in bed, I found him sitting in front of the mirror in the bathroom looking so very forlorn and confused at the green locks. He kept saying, "Somedoby dib someding to my haired, momma. Somdoby dib someding to my haired."

"A forlorn, freaked-out, green-headed fat-cheeked squirrel on crack did that to you, baby."

"You led a quirrel in da hoube? You mean momma."

Yup.

cured (ahem)

The doctor pronounced me "cured" today, except for, you know, the dizziness and fuzzy-headed-ness. They are actually better, and I think that's because I quit taking the medicine she gave me. In fact, I had felt so much worse Friday and Saturday, I was getting a bit depressed. I forgot to take the medicine Sunday... and felt better. Then just didn't take it yesterday or today, and am way better.

She couldn't really explain that. She's pretty certain that I had the inflammation of the nerve thing, and the medicine should have helped, but oh well. At least I feel like I have a few brain cells back in play.

The damndest thing keeps happening when I drive by a plant nursery. (Or in the case of when I was sick, forced my son to drive by one.) The car stops there and all these plants just magically jump into the back seat. I cannot explain it, but whoa, there they are. Freakiest thing. Happened again today.

mothers must be judged...

You know, I did the entry below about people with their minds so open, their brains have fallen out, but I also meant to do one about people being so frigging judgmental, and then I saw this entry from finslippy and cracked up.

ghosts and justice

I hadn't really paid attention to the news yesterday or today, so when I clicked on Eliza's entry for today and saw where they'd caught a new serial killer here, my heart stopped a moment. I saw how Eliza had known one of the victims and then I clicked through to the news story and there at the bottom of the page were the names of two more women he's confessed to having killed, and when I saw Mrs. Ann's name there, my heart broke and I sobbed.

When I was first married, we moved into a house across the street from Carl's grandmother, "Granny." We adored one another, but more than that, we were in a lot of ways a lifeline for each other. She had been widowed just four days before Carl and I were married, and when Luke came along, he gave her something to live for. I was twenty years old and suddenly thrust into a city where I knew no one, in a neighborhood of all these industrious career types, where the only "young" (meaning under 30) woman on the street to have kids was the one next door, and she was usually high and spacey, so there wasn't much in the way of companionship there. I was going out of my mind for converstation, for feeling some sense of connection to the real world of adults who could hold conversations, and Granny would often call me to visit. The special treats, though, were when her best friend, Mrs. Ann, was there.

Mrs. Ann was tall and gracious and had the bearing of a "genteel" southern woman, and I mean that in the best possible way. She had a very quick wit and great smile and you know, I had probably visited and had extended conversations with them for months before I even realized she had been born without much of a left hand. It was mostly a nub, and you really wouldn't have guessed she had anything wrong because she never let it slow her down. She always looked beautiful, and she always did as much as anyone around her -- probably more. She painted, played the piano, but most of all, Mrs. Ann specialized in making the people around her feel loved and wonderful. No, seriously, I cannot tell you how many times I would feel like complete dreck, and with baby spit up and god-knows-what-else clinging to my clothes, but I could walk over there with the kids to have a coke, and while the kids played around us, Mrs. Ann would always manage to find something to say to me that both lifted me up and felt absolutely real at the same time. She made me feel smart and okay and even a good mom, which was a seriously impressive feat, because I hadn't even babysitted for kids before I had one of my own and I think I made every mistake a mom could make. Twice. I enjoyed her, but it's more than just that in a casual sense of the word... I loved those lazy conversations in the deep afternoons, with the sun dancing through the screen onto the porch and the fan softly blowing and how I sat with these two women who were at least 50 years older than me and we still connected on dozens of levels as women. They made me see beyond the here and now, beyond the spit up and the diapers, beyond my own small world and problems and we talked about hundreds of things, from art to politics to books. It was my first real experiences of cross-generational connections, and it made me feel happy.

When she grew fearful of break-ins at her own home, she moved into an elite "retirement" type of place, even though she was still at full capacity. The day we heard she was murdered there was such a shock to us that even now, ten years later, I feel an incomprehensible grief, because someone so sweet and kind and good was ripped from the world in such a horrific way. (The article says there were ritualistic mutilations, but whatever you're thinking, think ten times worse.) I hadn't seen her nearly as much those last few years; she wasn't driving as often, both the kids were in some form of school, life got even more chaotic. But honestly, I missed her.

I still do.

MRI results

It's official -- the MRI results came back and yes, there are signs of a brain in there somewhere, a wholly intact one without tumors. Yay. I still have the weird dizziness, but a little less of the stuffy-cotton-headed-cloudy-thinking feeling, so there's improvement. And again, yay. I suspect that by the time I have to go to the follow-up next Tuesday, I'll be fine. (Ironically, I just noticed that in spite of teh fact that they gave me very specific instructions on how much of this prednisone to take each day -- 4 in the morning for the first four days, three in the morning for the next four days, then two for four, then one for four... they didn't give me enough tablets to actually do so. I'm short about six tablets. Oops.)

20/20 again -- the spin?

Daisy chased down this New York Post piece about the 20/20 "Win My Baby" episode where they are now saying, "Amid the fury, ABC has since yanked the promo and replaced it with a toned-down version that presents the program less as a reality show and more as a documentary," and, ""It is a thoughtful report on the process of open adoption that we think will be of interest to the American people. We simply wanted to make sure that people understood what we would be broadcasting."

I'm not sure if they can be believed, but I'm glad Daisy found that article -- at least they came to a sudden screeching halt on the reality-TV show-like promos, and mostly because of pressure swarming in furiously from the Internet. That feels empowering, a bit. It may be that the promo was simply a marketing ploy gone wrong and all out of synch with the tone of the show, but it's just as likely that the marketing ploy matched the tone and the show's been hastily re-edited to achieve a more documentary-like atmosphere. Either way, it was an incredibly stupid decision on someone's part over at ABC that promoting this in a circus-like "reality-TV" show atmosphere was good television and/or good "news." Finally, people are talking back about this. Maybe the message will get through to other networks.

(I think the show is set to air Friday, April 30, to answer Daisy's questions in the comments.)

routine

Thanks for the comments and e-mails about the MRI -- as I said below in the comments section, it was pretty routine. I didn't expect the radiologist (I guess that's what he was) to make any comments, and he didn't. They did an IV for the dye, but that one collapsed when he started to put the dye in, so they had to use the other arm. He joked that it was a good thing I wasn't trying to shoot up anything because I had no veins. But it went smoothly, if not a little boring. I think I may even have napped, in spite of the weird lasery-clicky noises the machine makes.

I have to say I started to laugh right before because they have all of these questions to make sure that you in NO WAY POSSIBLE have anything metal in your body. And I know people forget things over the years, or forget that something actually was a metal item (like a wire mesh thing for a hernia), but really -- the near ferocity of the questions started making me paranoid that I secretly had pins in me that they knew about which were going to fly out of my body like Wolverine's (XMen).

Carl had more good news on the new business today -- it now seems extremely viable (this from the attorneys and someone who's at the very top of the place that had hired the Florida people... they're fed up with those people and want to phase them out, but didn't have a viable second option, so we may step right into all their work without real competition.) Even if that doesn't happen that simply, everyone seems to think it's viable. I'll probably not say much more about it until it's fully up and running. (I mean, really, you'll all kill me on the up and down ride of starting up a new business, right? Because it will take about two months to be fully operational, and I imagine some hiccups along the way.)

It's a gorgeous day - I'm going to go sit on the swing with my laptop and write. I know I have office work, but to hell with it. I need a mental break from the not-sleeping and imagining myself as a female Wolverine. (Now that, let me tell you, is a scary thought.)

slow

Not feeling any better, but not feeling any worse. I think the medicine may be working, but it makes me feel cotton-headed and not terribly articulate, which is extremely frustrating.

A sort of amazingly neat thing happened in the business end of things over the last couple of days. We have a niche type of construction business -- we specialize in a type of construction item that not many companies do, which has kept us busy even when other companies were scrambling for work. It's not a high-margin profit type of thing, but it is fairly steady. As a result, Carl has gotten to know this particular business extremely well, and he learned over the last few days that there is an angle (certifiying the item once it's built) which used to be done by a huge agency and that agency is getting out of the business. They don't want to do it anymore, for some kinda strange reasons (even though it was profitable for them). Another company in Florida figured this out and jumped on it, and they're making extremely good money right now (fast)... but the neat thing is, Carl has much better contacts than they do. And, he's got a friend who's just an amazing whiz at business (read: everything he touches turns to gold) who heard the idea from Carl and wants to finance it. There isn't another guy out there I'd trust like this one -- he's tried to do good things for Carl repeatedly when there was no payoff for him because a long time ago, before Carl had a clue he had any money / business acumen, Carl helped him out with some things and just treated him as one of the family. That's just Carl's way, and the guy realized it and has, ever since, tried to take Carl under his wing and help us grow.

Well, this thing? Could easily be national. We'll start with our own state, but three of our contacts are national, and if we get even one of their contracts, it would be a big deal. It's not something that would go fast -- it may take a year to set up, but the guy who's helping us has already scouted and found what we need to buy (and saved thousands of dollars because of his contacts) and he's already buying them.

So, while I'm not getting my hopes up for anything fast, I feel very good about this potential here, especially with this other guy's help.

pins & needles & milestones

Sometimes I look around, and I wonder how on earth I got here... a woman with two grown sons. I'm too young for that. (No, really. I started at two.) (Well, okay. Twenty. I had Luke when I was twenty, and to this day, I am amazed they let me take an actual living, breathing child home with me, as clueless as I was. Utterly, totally, clueless.)

I read things like Lizbeth's entry about how difficult parenting can be sometimes and how reading other blogs helps, or how dooce talks about fighting off depression amidst the joy of having a child, of constantly worrying if you're doing things right, or doing enough, and trying so hard not to lose yourself in process... and I am comforted. I wish women like these, and Tamar and so many others had been online when my kids were little. Hell, I wish there had even been an online. Amazing how ancient that feels, when it was really only a few years ago.

What I remember most is the isolation: it seemed almost complete as soon as I had Luke. I was a very young mother, and we moved away from the small town I had grown up in and into the city, in a neighborhood of middle-aged people with grown kids, and lots of older people and only a handful of young parents sprinkled throughout... and most of those were way more corporate than I could be (or wanted to be, I so rebelled against the corporate structure). I was so constantly alone with the kids, and trying to work from home (both doing the books / answering the phone for our fledgeling construction business and trying to write... both solo types of tasks), I sometimes felt like I had gone for days and days without any real interaction with other moms. Mostly, I just felt scared -- scared that I was going to screw up, scared that I wasn't going to do a good job as a mom, scared that in some way I wouldn't know what to do when it was critical.

It's every mother's nightmare, I suppose, and I remember the morning it hit home with the force of a nuclear explosion. Jake (4) and Luke (8) had eaten with Carl's parents the night before, and my mother-in-law noticed that Jake was cranky and his left eyelid looked "heavy." Not swollen, or anything obvious -- she was worried that maybe in one of their battles (and at that age, the boys had taken to a lot of battling), Luke may have bopped Jake in the eye. We looked at it, decided that it was nothing, and they went home. Carl was out of town, and there I was with two cranky, grumpy boys, trying to convince them to get to bed early without knocking each other senseless (they shared a room). It took a while (baths, battle, bed, battle, begging for snacks and milk, finally bed)... and I collapsed in exhaustion.

The screaming woke me up.

Just after six a.m., screams pierced my consciousness, and I slammed out of bed on a dead run before I had even opened my eyes. A second later, I was standing over Jake, trying to grasp what I was seeing, and for a long moment, my brain just wouldn't accept the image or allow it to form into any sort of comprehension. And then suddenly, I saw: Jake's left eye was completely swollen shut; it was purple and black and he was burning up with fever. I took his temperature -- not easy with a screaming four-year-old -- and the temp was 104. Freaked does not begin to explain the surreal feeling of absolute shock that tightens every muscle, shutting down the lungs until your brain screams at you to get moving, get something done.

I frantically called the doctor; Patti had been my friend through high school and we'd grown up in the same neighborhood. I'd been in her wedding, and when she went into medicine and announced it would be pediatrics, I knew I'd bring my kids to her as soon as she opened her doors. She is the type of person who flat does not accept second best as a possibility, and knowing that about her made me feel safe with her guarding my kids. Of course, at six a.m., I got the answering service, who transferred me to a nurse... who told me I was being over-anxious. That 104 isn't that horrible for a kid, and I just needed to give him some children's Tylenol. The earliest appointment she could give me was for 11:00 -- and she was going to have to "work me in" even at that time (translation: I would sit in the office until 12:30 when Patti had finished with everyone who'd had appointments.) I didn't think 11:00 was early enough, but she assured me it was probably just a bug bite, that "you young mothers" all just worry over nothing.

I hung up feeling like a moron, and feeling... insulted. I was young, yes, but Jake was my second child and I wasn't the total novice she thought. So I seethed... but I followed her instructions and gave him the children's Tylenol. His fever kept going up. I called Carl, who was freaked out himself but trying to be calm to help me not panic. He reminded me about putting Jake in a cool bath to bring it down, which worked -- temporarily. And the fever started spiking up again. I gave him alcohol rubs, and it would cool him off a bit, but the fever would climb. By 7:30, I noticed he was getting unresponsive, which scared the absolute hell out of me.

I called the nurse back, and she was more than a little annoyed. I insisted that he wasn't doing well, and she just as forcefully insisted that I come in at 11:00 and they would check him over.

I hung up, took his temperature again, realized it was still going up in spite of everything and decided, fuck the nurse, I was bringing Jake in.

He passed out on our way over there. Luke was in the back seat, quietly freaking out because he thought Jake was dying, and I was trying to drive in morning rush hour traffic to get Jake to Patti's office. When I walked in with him limp in my arms, the same nurse greeted me -- and on hearing my name, was pissed that I had come in at 8:00 instead of 11:00 as she had instructed me. She told me to have a seat and she would let Patti know I was there.

I kicked the door open to the doctor's area and started shouting for Patti. Patti came out of a room and took one look at us across the vast nurse's area... and ran.

Patti never runs. She's got a degenerative spinal disease, and running is horrible for her. But she ran, and scooped him out of my arms and starting hammering me with questions -- but she froze a moment when she saw the eye.

I explained when I had first called... and what the nurse had said. The nurse was standing there apologizing... to Patti -- for "letting a patient interrupt her"... (I heard Patti fire her later when I was leaving).

Patti suspected meningitis, and she was worried that we had waited too long to come in. Apparently, one of the warning signs of a child having meningitis can be a swollen and/or discolored eyelid, and as she told the nurse, "it's one of the true pediatric emergencies" and that the nurse should have known that.

She ran with Jake back to an examining room and after checking him, pulled me into another room.

I used to make mud pies with Patti in our back yard when we were kids. We were perhaps five (me) and seven (her) and we would make these elaborate pies and try to figure out a way to con the boys into buying one. Never in my life could I have imagined that one day I would be sitting across from her as she explained to me that she was going to have to do a spinal tap on my child, and that there was the possibility that she could hurt him -- and that the possibility meant she had to explain to me that she could cause him to be paralyzed or have brain damage or any number of things. Or even die. She didn't believe it would happen, but she felt sure that the meningitis was too far along and she needed that spinal tap now -- there wasn't enough time for them to order it at the emergency room.

The world lost focus while she talked. Everything went hazy, and the sound traveled for miles and miles before it reached my brain. My baby. My baby was screaming in the other room and I had to give permission to my friend to put a big needle into his back, draw spinal fluid, and possibly hurt him permanently. How was I supposed to think in a moment like that?

I couldn't. I called Carl to tell him what was going on, and he was out of his mind with fear -- because he didn't know Patti the way I did, and he didn't have that same level of trust, and he was out of town and could hear Jake's screams from the other room over my phone.

They wouldn't let me in the examination room when they did the spinal tap. When I was anywhere near him, he would wrench away from everyone with such force trying to get to me, it took four of them to hold him, and Patti needed him absolutely still.

I died out in that hallway, hearing him scream with such force.

Patti came out, handed me the spinal tap container and said, "You have to go to the pediatric emergency entrance at the Lake. It's on the second floor -- DO NOT stop to go to admitting or anywhere else, and don't let anyone slow you down. Look, Toni, run red lights -- just get there as soon as you can. We don't have time to get an ambulence here to get you and bring you. Do you understand?"

I nodded. I carried Jake, who was sobbing and still burning with fever. Eight-year-old Luke -- in shock, I am sure -- carried the spinal tap container with the full appreciation of how careful he had to be.

I ran red lights. I had my flashers on, and someone had handed me a white handkerchief on my way out of the doctor's office, and I would wave that and honk the horn and people would get out of my way. I made it there in stunning record time and we ran to the pediatric emergency entrance.

Patti had called ahead, and they were waiting for us. They grabbed Jake, they grabbed the spinal tap container from Luke and ran. One of the doctors there ran out to me and said, "Look -- we're pretty sure it's meningitis -- the question is only if it crossed the blood/brain barrier and if so, by how much. We'll know how brain damaged he's going to be when we get that report back. Meanwhile, we've got to start an IV in him -- we're going to give him the strongest antibiotic there is in a drip to stop it wherever it is. Do you understand?"

how brain damanged... floated around me, spinning, spinning, and I nodded. how brain damaged...

I had called my parents when I had left the house for Patti's... and Carl called them back to tell them about the spinal tap and me having to hurry to the emergency room. My dad had left work right then and gotten there just a second or two after the doctor explained the need for the IV, and the nurse came out to tell me they couldn't get an IV in Jake -- that he was screaming so hard and wrenching himself away from them so much, they had decided that if I was there, holding him down, maybe that would work. Dad came to the back with me (and I think poor Luke was back there, too, because I had nowhere to leave him) and I honestly think if Dad hadn't been there, we wouldn't have gotten that IV in. Dad -- 6'2" and extremely strong -- had to take all of his strength to hold Jake down and calm him, as I was trying to do.

We got the IV in, they started the antibiotic drip, and we had to wait for the report to come back. We were moved to a room, and it seems like I had been there for a lifetime, watching the too-still body of my exhausted, sick child swallowed in this huge hospital bed, when the doctor finally came in.

It was definitely meningitis. And of the two bacterial types, it was the worst one -- the most aggressive. Had he been younger, the doctor said, he probably wouldn't have made it through the night. But at four, his body's immune system was stronger, and that was the only thing that had given him a fighting chance with this particular bacteria. It hadn't crossed the blood/brain barrier at the back of the eye. It was right at the barrier -- and he showed me some MRI scan they had done apparently when we first arrived, pointing out the infection and where it was and where the barrier was, and my god, it was not hardly a splinter of an inch away from permanent damage.

"It's lucky you came in when you did," he said. "Another few minutes, and it would have crossed over and there's no telling what kind of damage it would have done."

I suddnely thought of how intimidated I had been by that nurse, and how I had almost waited. I shook. I shook so hard, I couldn't even speak clearly to Carl on the phone -- I think Dad had to take the phone and explain it to him. We were in the hospital for four days, and not until late into the third did Jake start perking up and acting like a normal boy again.

It's amazing, really, when you make it through these things and you wonder how on earth you did. I write this tonight while Jake is out at his senior prom. He told me before he left that they weren't meeting up with one particular friend since he'd been bragging all week about how drunk he was going to get, and Jake didn't want to be anywhere around it. His girlfriend's cell phone accidentally dialed here a little while ago, and I couldn't figure out who it was or what was going on, until I heard them all laughing -- they seemed like they were having a good time (and sounded sober, yay). What can you do? As a mom, sometimes nothing. Sometimes, run like hell to beat the odds. Most of the time, it's somewhere in the middle with no real map. But it's very very nice to have others on this same path writing into the night, sending out their stories into the electric mist. It reminds me I am not alone.

Jake and Elise, taken in our backyard just before their prom.

the (ahem) "mommy" club

When I read Lizbeth's "oops" entry, I remembered all too well doing the same sort of thing. And the daylights savings times were always a royal pain in the ass, but there were other times that I probably should have been nominated "bad mommy" or something.

I swear, I would try to be a good mom. Really. But with two small kids and helping to run a company and going back to school full-time, I had precious little time to get any actual writing done, and given that's what the degree program was for, it was sort of essential. Besides, I lived to write, so carving out a few hours here or there was as necessary as breathing. When Jake was about two, I found a "mommy's day out" program not far from where we lived, and it was bliss -- I had five hours, two days a week to write. I loved having the kids, loved being able to work from home with the construction company stuff and the writing so I could do more with them... but I think I was always the very first person in line to drop Jake off in the morning, and the very last mommy to show up in the afternoon.

The writing kept me sane. (Sort of. Are any writers really sane?) I would get to the story and while it might take me a while to get revved up, to really get back into the zone, once I was there, I would lose all track of the real world. It was amazing, how productive those hours were, how in the zone I was. One day, I had been at if for a while, and the phone rang. First of all, I almost never hear the phone when it rings when I'm writing unless there happens to be a phone in the scene I'm working on, because I am that focused. Even if the phone is near my ear, I won't usually notice it, but I happened to be wrapping up a scene and when it rang for probably the fourth or fifth time, I sort of "came out of" the writing-coma-zone I had been in and answered it... I wasn't entirely "out" of the zone, because I said, "Hullo?" and a woman who seemed to know who I was started speaking, and said, "Toni? Are you still writing?"

Wow, a total stranger knew I was a writer, and while this should have tipped me off that something wasn't quite gelling in my head, I was still staring at the screen, already half-way immersed in the next scene. I think I mumbled a "yes" and then she asked, "Well, we were just wondering when you were going to come pick up Jake?"

I swear to God, my first reaction was to look at the scene and scan all the characters' names and think, "there's no Jake in here," and I said, "Jake who?"

There was a moment of silence. She said, "Um... Jake... you know... your son?"

I said,"Oh," still looking at the screen, and then it hit me... OH! Shit!

I looked at the time... they were supposed to have closed three hours ago and had tried to call a couple of times. She said they figured I was writing and they were enjoying him (he was such a fun kid), but they really had to go home now, so could I come get him.

I. Was. Mortified. It wasn't bad enough that I had forgotten him, but they heard me say, "Jake who?" Geez.

Yeah, I should be getting that mommy of the year award soon.

When Jake was in pre-K and then the next year in Kindergarten, he was a rather stubborn creature. It was incredibly hard sometimes to get him to do something he didn't want to do unless he could see a real reason for it, and there are just so many times you want to bang your head against a wall... and sure, technically, kids are supposed to do what the parent says just because they say so (does that actually ever work?)... but this kid? Nope. And rewards or punishment made no difference.

However... he was highly motivated by empathy and if he thought he might be hurting someone else, then he would do whatever it was you asked.

Okay, I am evil. I will admit it. I was having a particularly difficult time getting Jake to do something necessary that he flat didn't want to do, and I was exhausted and just needed to get him finished, and without really thinking about the psychological ramifications, right there on the spot, I made up the "mommy" club. And (here's the evil part), told him that if he didn't do that thing, I would be kicked out of the mommy club because "they" would think I was a bad mommy.

Poor little guy's eyes got as round as volleyballs, and he very meekly went and did whatever it was that I wanted, and I was just so freaking relieved to not have a battle on my hands for the one millionth time, I didn't think much about it.

Every once-in-a-while, though, we'd hit another stubborn streak and then he would say, "but I don't want you to get kicked out of the mommy club" in a little sweet voice, like a matyr going to the flames, and he'd go do whatever it was that was frustrating me.

When he was seven, he was over at his best friend's house. Thomas' mom and I had become extremely good friends, and she knew my abberant character pretty well... but when Thomas did something wrong and Jake said, "Oh, you can't do that! Your mom will get kicked out of the mommy club!" she said, "The what?" When he explained, she thought he was joking, and she exclaimed, "There's no such thing as the mommy club!"

Talk about having a good thing completely torpedoed.

He came home, looked me squarely in the eye, his little hands on his hips and said, "Mommy. There is NOT a mommy club."

And did I cop to it and apologize like a good mom?

Of course not. I said, "Miss Lisa just doesn't know about it, Jake, because only the really good mommies get in."

So, yes, I am definitely going to hell.

He's seventeen now, and no apparent scaring. Although he didn't keep buying that mommy club thing for much longer... but man, it was so nice when he did.

end-of-the-world

Y'all, the world is going to be coming to an abrupt end pretty soon. I just thought you should know in case you need to wrap up anything you're busy with right now. I'm helpful that way.

How do I know this, you might ask? Well, two things have happened recently which have never, ever happened before and as such, are signs of the impending apocalypse. Seriously.

First, Luke got registered for the next semester of college... early. Now this may not sound like that big of a deal to any of you, but this child has made it an art form to scoot into registration at the last possible second with big puppy-dog eyes, hammering away at the computer, trying to beat the clock before the registration shuts down, barely getting four classes (12 hours) lined up. And it's never the right four classes because of course, all of the things he needs are already full, so he knows he's going to have to spend a week dropping and adding classes like a frantic little squirrel storing nuts for winter when there's already a blizzard blowing around.

All of this effort is usually for NOTHING because without fail, he will next be purged from the computer system. For. No. Apparent. Reason. First semester, purged. Fought all week long with the registrar's office, who finally concluded that he was "accidentally" purged and they added him back. Second semester, purged. I think because he has green eyes. That made about as much sense as what they ended up telling him. Next semester after that, he actually registered before the very last minute, and checked with the registrar's office, made sure that there was absolutely nothing he needed to do, no reason whatsoever that he was going to be purged.

He was purged. Next semester, he bought lucky shorts, found a four leaf clover, lit candles. Purged. Semester after that? Voodoo, something with a chicken I don't even want to describe. Purged. Next semester, he thought he'd fool the whole system by changing universities. Brand spanking new place. New computer system, totally unrelated to the other one. Purged. I stopped him from sacrificing small children, since it wasn't going to help. But this time? He registered early. And wasn't purged. (So far.) The world is ending.

The second event was so unpredictable, I was rendered speechless. Speechless, people. Me. Doesn't ever happen.

Carl went to the dermatologist and had to wait a while, and had several magazines to choose from -- something about mechanics, golf, business... and Redbook. He picked up the Redbook. (I swear, if we had earthquakes here, half of Louisiana would have fallen into the Gulf.) He explained to me later at dinner how Redbook used to be so conservative, but now on every magazine cover, they were advertising articles on sex... particularly they have a feature running which claims to explain a new sexual position every month. (He wasn't impressed with what they'd had so far.) There were quizzes in there -- he took them. There were articles on bras and their proper fit, people, and he read them. This is a man who will rubberneck a backhoe and nearly cause a wreck but is totally oblivious to a pretty woman walking by (which I've seen happen when he didn't know I was around)... this is a man who has whole tool catalogs memorized, who looks like a little kid with the Sears Christmas Book every time a new, updated tool catalog comes in, who has more tools than God, and he read the whole magazine. And liked it. And then suggested we should get a subscription.

I think my head flew off my shoulders right then.

So just providing a community service here... wrap up your work, hug someone you love, because I'm pretty sure the entire planet's going to explode by tomorrow.

every little thing...

I discovered this fun new mom's blog, dooce... she cracked me up with the "stupid standard" post, except that it reminded me of all the things I did that, if the kids knew about them? I would totally owe some therapists somewhere my house and all future earnings.

The first big one was the time when Luke wouldn't sleep. Nine months of colic, people. Nine. Whole. Months. No sleep. Sleep deprivation can make you do not entirely bright things. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) He never slept, except to catnap just long enough for me to start thinking that maybe, just maybe, I might actually get to eat or sleep or you know, shower, and feel like a human again, instead of just an over-grown furry milkbag, but then as soon as I'd make it into the other room, bam, crying.

One night, very late, we'd been doing the pacing, dancing, singing, pleading, begging, jiggling, rocking, begging, dancing, pleading thing, and for some reason that made a whole lot of sense at that moment, I decided that I would "swing" Luke. (We didn't have one of those fancy swings that you can park a kid in... or otherwise known as the Jake Motel, once Jake came along.) I stood and started with him near my knees and lifted him up, then let his weight carry him back down where I'd swing him through my legs so that we had enough momentum to go back up again. He was five months old and heavy; I needed the momentum. So anyway, I start swinging him, and he does this astonishing thing: he laughed. Actual laughter, not hysterical I-am-going-to-die and you-are-going-to-hell screaming, but laughing. And of course, this must be encouraged, this strange laughing thing that I had heard other babies did, but apparently my baby was broken and never did this thing. But there he was, laughing. Was I going to stop swinging him to go back to the screaming? No, I was not. Even if we did gain a bit of momentum on each swing... even if he was getting a little heavy and my arms were getting a lot numb. Because at the top of every arc, that kid laughed. I would have kept it up until my arms fell off.

Unfortunately, my arms did not, indeed, fall off. No, what happened was that at the top of the arc, after we'd been doing this for about four thousand years, Luke decided to be Superman, and he stiffened and popped clean out of my hands, doing the most perfect "Superman is flying imitation," you would have been impressed.

And here's my thought process:

Holy shit, he's flying.

Holy shit. He's flying.

Over my head. With the flying. Only babies can't fly, a fact that seared itself into my brain the very next split second. Because I am quick like that. I spun around and yep, there he was, sailing head first toward the rocking chair. Have you ever seen a baby register complete shock? Let me tell you, they can do that. They look a little bit like a squirrel who just swung for a limb and missed and realizes that, damn, gravity works.

So I dove for him, sort of half-assed breaking his fall before his head ker-thunked onto the rocking chair, and we both hit the chair with such force, the chair and Luke and I all went sliding into the piano.

He had the mosed dazed, confused look on his face. Like geez, if this is supposed to be when she loves me, what is she going to do when I pee on her? And he didn't really move much. I'm not entirely sure he blinked, there for a minute -- probably wanting to keep an eye on me in case this tossing-the-baby concussion thing was all a part of the game.

I swear to god, that kid never had another night of colic. Nary a peep. It is an amazing testament to the resiliency of kids that mine made it past the age of two.

and the beat goes on...

Twenty-two years ago at 7:30ish p.m., we were married. We were barely old enough to think, much less get married, but we both knew right away that this was it. We'd dated one date and knew. That whole love at first date thing. We were married three months later. I was 19 and he was 22. Insane, that it should work.

In my head, we are still in our twenties, sometimes in our early thirties, even though I am 41 and he is 44 now. He is crazy, funny, sweet, sexy, annoying, and always interesting. I have yet to manage to predict exactly what he'll say or do, and he makes me laugh, generally at least once a day. There have been incredibly difficult times and, luckily, many more incredibly good times.

(an aside... he is cooking in the kitchen as I write this, and he just looked in the oven and exclaimed to the chicken breast there, "That's your happy ass." He cracks me up.)

I want to write more here -- how, when I don't believe in myself, he gets indignant because he thinks it's obvious that of course I can do anything I want, how he constantly does the little things... but we're off for some fun, so more later.

finding voice (long)

Before you read the rant, understand this: I think teaching is one of the most difficult and important jobs in the world. I have huge respect for teachers and we have been lucky to have a few in our lives who were just beyond stellar. But this time... well, ranting will follow:

I'm not sure what the most difficult thing about havng a kid with special needs is, but one of them is helping that kid to find his own voice in the world. If the world already feels disorganized and chaotic, if you think you're doing what you're supposed to be doing and only after the fact, discover that you're not, or that you've left out half of the requirements or you've jumbled them up... you don't really know how to fix that. In Jake's case, his ADD and dysgraphia compound one another and impair what's typically referred to as the "executive functions" -- time management, organization, sequencing events, strategy. He will legitimately believe he's organized and doing what's needed, only to discover there are things he's left out, things he's forgotten or misunderstood, or just plain jumbled in such a way that what he does produce isn't "right" no matter how much effort he's put into it. When this happens in school with all its rules and regulations, with teachers who naturally assume that the kid either (a) didn't care or (b) didn't try very hard or (c) both, then their attitude toward a kid who's drowning in chaos is to generally heap punishment on top of what the kid had felt was his or her best effort. It's no wonder a kid facing this day in and day out would just give up.

We've battled this for Jake for years, ever since we had his diagnosis. The frustrating part is that they're learning more and more about dysgraphia and how it relates to the chaos a child experiences in the world, but I didn't know nearly as much as I needed to back then, and in a way, he's paying for that now. It's frustrating, because there are things I would have done differently to help facilitate problem-solving for him.

Meanwhile, Jake had been having extreme difficulties with his English teacher, and when I tried to talk to her a few days ago, I said, "Hello," on the phone and she LAUNCHED into all the things she thinks Jake has done wrong. And while they have to give him some accommodations, she felt like they were doing all they could for him and he just didn't care and wasn't trying. The anger and animosity were surprising, given that I had tried to call her for three weeks to address what I could see to be a developing problem. During the conversation, she seemed to relax and come around a little bit, but we still had issues. I asked for a meeting.

When Jake and I arrived, I expected to meet the teacher and student teacher and although we were going to be discussing problems, I thought that the previous phone conversation would have at least lessened the animosity.

Boy, was I wrong.

We sat down and the teacher launched again. I was shocked. She said, "Now, before we start..." and then she talked with a level of venom I have never experienced with a teacher. First, you don't get to say, "before we start" so that you can launch an attack and expect me to sit there quietly. That will happen the day I quit breathing. Second, I am all about having my kid take responsibility for where he isn't pulling his weight. But I am not going to let someone sit there and call him names and make accusations -- which had NO foundation in truth -- and wait until that person runs out of steam before meekly speaking up.

She was lucky I didn't drop kick her across the room.

I tried three times to politely interrupt her so that we could get the conversation back on track. And by "back on track" I mean, an actual dialog where she talked to me and asked questions and Jake and I got to do that apparently unheard-of-by-her thing... respond. When she kept going, I put my hand out, tapped the table and said, "Mrs. W. you're going to have to stop talking now, because you are pissing me off. I came here to help you, and to make sure that Jake was pulling his weight, but we are not going to accomplish a single thing if you spend time hurtling accusations; you're making me angry and no telling how Jake feels. IF the point of us coming was so that you could have an actual dialog with Jake to get to the bottom of this, then let's do a dialog."

Her eyes were as big as saucers. I am not a big person, and I rarely come across as a loud person, and it takes a lot to piss me off, but watching someone berate my child is right up there on the top of the list on things to make me go ballistic. But once I am pissed off, I will take you down. And, since I had shocked her into silence, I took over the meeting. I asked her to give me some examples of things Jake had not being doing well. She didn't have many -- mostly that he didn't write things down in the order she wanted, etc. I asked her if she had seen his diagnosis. She was aware of the ADD, but didn't seem to know about (or understand, possibly) the dysgraphia.

One of the strategies for ADD students to help them remember what to do later when they get home? Write down the assignment from the board. Great strategy, if writing something down isn't part of the problem. It's like asking someone who doesn't see so well to stand at the back of the classroom without their glassess and read off the board in order to get the grade -- it's a definite disadvantage, and no one would dream of doing that. Asking a dysgraphic person to write a list down -- in a hurry, when the bell rings -- is about the worst thing to do.

She didn't know. It was like lightbulbs had gone off. I explained to her -- look, if you would ask him to say it out loud to you from what he's written down, one of you will catch whether or not he's written it correctly. If you've written something on the board and he comes up to ask you a question about it, it's not because he's being a pain in the ass on purpose -- he genuinely has gotten confused. If you humiliate him, he's going to give up.

She asked Jake some questions, and he very articulately began explaining some things. This is a kid who can -- when he wants to -- discourse on a number of topics at a college level of thinking / analysis. He's got that in him... it just rarely shows, because if he thinks you think he's stupid, he just shuts down. It's a very bad trait -- I want him to see that as a challenge (as a, fuck you, I'm going to prove you wrong anyway sort of thing), but he's not quite there yet. He's getting there -- he seems less intimidated and more determined to help himself.

By the end of the meeting, there was such a significant turnaround in her demeanor, it was worth the time and effort. She and Jake were talking and they came up with simple, easy ways for him to stay on track without disrupting her teaching plans or soaking up a lot of time (or being belligerent and a pain in the ass.) Jake apologized for having just shut them out and not tried to explain - she apologized for not having asked earlier if there was a problem. A much better outlook.

We still have a few hurdles there with her, but he sees that he can confront these issues and do something about them. He wants to go to college, and I want him to realize he is going to face this sort of sentiment over and over, and it's up to him to help himself.

He's got to find his voice in this world, and it can't be a whiny, "poor me" sort of thing -- there are too many people out there with far more things wrong and they view those as a challenge and they don't slow down. And we're getting there. I think.

When we got to the car after the meeting, I asked Jake how he thought it had gone. I was still focused on the end of the meeting, and he laughed and said, "Well, it got a whole lot better -- but geez, Mom, I thought you were about to throw down with the teacher right there in the library." Cracked me up.

But he did say that he saw what he could have been doing to help himself more, and since then, he's been making the effort. Sometimes a little throw-down is what you need.

hello, stress

Wanna know how to get your heart rate up? Wake up, wander to the office, past the front door, notice a white piece of paper taped to the window of the door. Check it out, realize that it is a bench warrant. For your youngest son. Realize it's for a speeding ticket that he gave to you at your insistance to help him remember to pay in time. Realize that you did not even think about it again after you put it in a place where you would have to see it every day so that you wouldn't forget it. Realize that this place is the "in" basket, where the cat decided she wanted to sleep. Then realize that you'd put other papers on top, because March was such a long way off, there's no way you wouldn't dig through the whole basket again by that time, so there was nothing to worry about. And just for kicks and giggles, realize that your youngest son is driving home after school and could easily be picked up and put into jail because he was relying on you to remind him.

Yeah. Fun morning.

Jake has ADD, and has a very difficult time with time management. I, on the other hand, generally remember dates and times and phone numbers and such with a freakish accuracy. I wanted him to hand over the ticket so that he wouldn't forget.

Yup, great going there, mom.

So as soon as he got home from school (luckily he gets out in the morning), we rushed to the courthouse, went through about 1500 hoops, up and down the elevator a half-a-dozen times, but we got it paid, got it set up so that he can take a driving class and, once he does, have the ticket expunged from his record.

Whew.

even more with the sick

We had looked up "pink eye" on the internet and saw that there were three causes: allergy, bacterial, or viral. Typically, bacterial is the one most doctors treat, and therefore, is what most doctors assume is the cause. Turns out Jake is not typical. Of course. The ophthalmologist (doesn't that word look funny?) put this funky dye stuff in his eye and did some sort of blue light on there and pronounced it pink eye of the viral kind, which is apparently much more difficult to get rid of (unless we're very lucky and it's something called adnovirus, which I am probably spelling incorrectly, but it's a virus, it can bite me).... because with the adnovirus, your body can build up immunity to it in eight to ten days and fight it off. However, since Jake had recently been sick, his immune system hasn't really regrouped yet, and even if it is this adnovirus, he might take longer. If it's some other virus, lots of nasty things could happen, like scar tissue on the cornea, harming his vision, so to be safe, she precribed him some anti-viral drops (which is quite different and much more expensive than the anti-bacterial drops we'd already been given before).

And apparently the virus is so unusual, none of our regular pharmacies had the drops; I was most grateful for a very determined nurse who called around to every pharmacy in creation and finally found one bottle of drops, not terribly far away.

I swear, if I hear of some freakish strain of illness within a hundred miles of either kid, I'm locking them up for the duration, because they will not only get it, it will mutate into some impossible-to-heal-unless-you-hock-your-house version of the virus, only to infect my kids. Grrr.

more with the sick

We thought Jake had pink eye last week (on top of all the other fun stuff I was dealing with for Luke's allergic reactions), so the doctor prescribed some drops. I just had to get a ride to go pick Jake up at a friend's house because his eyes were bothering him so much, he couldn't drive home. They are swollen, and one is very red. We don't know if this is still the pink eye or if he got something in the eye and scratched it -- he'd been working for the friend's dad, unloading all the items out of their attic (they're remodeling). So now he's home, the light hurts them so much, the TV bothers him. I had him flush them out with some eye wash we have, and we're going to keep doing that since it seemed to give him some relief. Then I imagine it will be back to the doctor again tomorrow. Yippee.

allergies, revisited

Both boys seem to be mending just fine. Jake looks a thousand percent better, but Luke didn't start improving until he started taking the cortizone does-pack -- and it's a huge improvement. Which means I may actually sleep tonight instead of waking up every little while (about every 45 minutes) to check on him; I kept dreaming that in the middle of the night, his throat and nose has swollen shut and he was fighting to breathe. It never got that bad (it looked much worse, but never actually got that bad), though it probably didn't help to have the second doctor I spoke to last night warn that I may have to take him to the emergency room if he didn't improve. But he's gotten quite annoying in the last hour or so (drumming on things, telling really bad puns), so he's definitely on the mend. (Too bad the puns weren't killed by the allergy.)

allergic reactions

I mentioned yesterday I had to take both boys to the doctor for allergic reactions. Jake had a rash on his arm, but Luke -- who had been completely well the night before -- had awakened with his eyes swelling shut, and his nose and mouth inflamed and swelling... with some sort of itching on his chin that wasn't really a rash. He had eaten the same things we had, slept in the same sheets laundered in the same detergents, had not consumed anything different than ordinary, and had not come into contact with anything that we could identify as an allergen.

Luke had called me from his house (rented near his university) -- and said he could drive to meet us back at the house to go with us to the doctor. Only, he called when he was about half-way and said it had gotten worse, and could we pick him up. We met with him and both Jake and I freaked -- he looked terrible -- very swollen and almost unrecognizable. I'm surprised he had been able to even drive that far.

The doctor took one look at him (from across the room) and didn't even want to step closer. I am so not happy with that doctor, it's not even funny. He barely spent five minutes in the room with both kids ($186.00 worth of five minutes) and gave Jake antibiotics (which are working) and by just scanning Luke from the door, decided that he needed a cortizone shot with an antihistamine (I have no idea what kind). I watched Luke carefully all night long, since he wasn't improving. Making sure the swelling wasn't worse and that he could breathe.

By this afternoon, with still no improvement, I called the doctor back who then called in another dose-pack of cortizone. Luke's taken a dose and already I can see some improvement.

We still don't have a clue what it could be. He showed me a rash now starting on his hands. Hopefully, the dose pack will take care of both.

(I'm still pissed at that doctor, though.)

heart-broken

The 20th was my oldest son's and his girlfriend's three-year anniversary from their first date.

I think they have sort of broken up today, but I don't know the details.

If that's true, I am heart-broken. Luke's girlfriend has been a big part of our lives for three whole years, in every family event, good and bad. She's cute, sweet, fun, and I know they're very very close. I also know what's brought this on (basically, they're still too young to get married, and I think part of it is that he has been somewhat attracted to other people without being honest about that). It just hit me a little while ago that if they do break up, he's got plenty of friends around him that are his friends; she doesn't have hardly any. Not super close ones, anyway, and that's mostly because she's done what a lot of young girlfriends do... she's incorporated his friends into her life, and didn't branch out on her own and make more friends for herself. As someone who was very shy in high school and really didn't start blossoming that self-confidence that we see now until a year or so ago... and with having so much difficult school to do, it was easier for her to use what little time she had to focus on Luke. Since he had so many friends, and since she didn't have all that many, she's now in a position that, if they do break up, she doesn't have anyone close to help her through this, besides her mom. And me.

I love this girl like she was my own daughter. In a lot of ways, I've been her mom, because for all three years, her parents were in another state, and I've been mom whenever she needed someone to hash things out with, someone to go to for advice, etc. And I truly enjoy her company -- she's easy to get along with, lots of fun and has nary a judgmental or mean bone in her body.

The problem is, they've been dating since they were were 19, and now they're at different universities. It's not exactly long distance, but it's impossible to share those day-to-day joys that keep you together when the going gets tough. Also, I suspect other girls are coming on to Luke and he's just not used to that sort of flattery; I think it's making him question himself, as much as anything else.

How on earth can I stand by and watch this? I have to, of course. I can't make him love her. I worry so much -- she was going to be a doctor, but last year, her grades (and his) dropped; they were spending so much time together, both of their GPAs suffered. Which doesn't hurt him nearly as much as it hurts her. So she switched majors into something she thinks she'd like better (and I think, ultimately, the switch is much better suited to her personality), but part of me thinks he may have harmed her in a way that's beyond "repair" -- other than whatever time can do. The idea of her suddenly having no one -- not him, not friends... well, it's killing me.

I know, he's my son. If they're not right for each other -- if there's something missing and he realizes that now instead of a couple of years from now when they were married / engaged / living together...well, now is better. But it sucks. I want to step in and talk to him and make sure he realizes what he's losing. Find out what's going on in his head; find some way of reassuring myself that he's really thought about this. Because I think, given what I sensed when they were here yesterday, that there really is no going back to the way that they were, and the suckage in that notion is heart-breaking. But he's extremely closed-mouthed about what he feels, especially when he's going through something negative. He always has been, which also breaks my heart.

I have no idea what to do. (Well, I know I can do nothing. I just don't know how to handle that, because I would miss her terribly.)

I wish it was back in the day when the biggest problem was a caterpiller sting or a scraped knee -- those things, I could fix. This? I feel helpless. It hurts.

birthdays

Today is my brother's 40th birthday. My baby brother. Who, if I may say so, looks far far far older than I do, thankyouverymuch. Heh.

It is just not possible that this kid who used to drive me absolutely out of my mind with irritation is, you know, an actual grown-up. Mike was a drummer in the school band. Every day I'd drive to school in a bright yellow VW bug and he'd drum on the dash, the steering wheel, my arms, my legs, (apparently my head was the cymbal). When that wasn't enough noise and aggravation, he'd roll down his window and add the roof of the bug for a deeper percussion echo. Every day after a twenty minute ride to school, I'd climb out of the car so thoroughly spazzed, I vibrated like Wile E Coyote after he'd stepped into the handle of a shovel.

The funny thing was, in spite of how he thrived on making me nuts (or nuttier) I'd have stepped in front of a truck for my baby brother, and often did, metaphorically speaking, when he'd get in trouble with our dad.

It's amazing to look at him at forty, this funny, bright, grown-up, who's a successful karate instructor (he's a Master, a fourth-degree black belt), with two schools, a new (happy) marriage. Who knew? (I did, truly.)

Happy birthday, my brother.

massive disappointment

Jake missed weigh-in this morning at 7 by five minutes, and so was not allowed to wrestle today. Which means he forfiets both matches.

When he called, he was so very deeply depressed. He had been so nervous last night, he hadn't been able to fall asleep until early this morning. When he sleeps, he sleeps extremely soundly -- particularly after being up late.

The coach did not have a wake-up call planned for the guys. No meeting prior to weigh-in to make sure everyone was up and ready and on time. This man has been coaching for 31 years, and the last two years, has exhibited a "just don't care" attitude. They told Jake they knocked on his door, but neither he or the other two boys heard anything, so all three missed. The other two had lost yesterday and so were going to wrestle in consolation rounds and they're younger, so they'll have another year.

I just cannot believe the coach didn't plan for this. They're kids -- they're not going to do everything right.

If I had had ANY idea the coach didn't have a meeting planned prior to weigh-in, I would have arranged for Jake to have a wake-up call from the hotel and then followed up with one of my own.

He was so upset, he couldn't bear to stay in New Orleans -- so he drove back already. Right now, he's visiting his girlfriend. And it's Valentine's Day -- something he's not likely to ever forget.

wrestling

The good:

Jake won his first bout in the state tournament, which means he can place no lower than fourth. If he wins the next one, then he wrestles in the finals for first or second.

The bad:

My car wasn't running well yesterday. We passed the gas station where I'd last filled up to discover that they had the gas tanks barricaded because they were having to work on the -- apparently, there were lots of complaints of trash and water in the gas. Great. I have no idea how much trouble fixing that is going to be.

The ugly:

We drove our spare car to the tournament. On the way home on the interstate (at 70mph) it was making a very strange noise, as if something was dragging. Then a loud popping sound and we suddenly had no brakes. None. Luckily Carl coasted to a stop on the shoulder.

At least we had free towing.

sandpaper: the miracle cure

There are a few things that, as a parent, you never really expect to hear from your kids. I'm thinking, "Hey, Mom? Can you come outside to the shop and run the belt-sander over my elbow?" would be one of them.

I'm not even sure I can explain this one.

Jake is 17, a senior, and a wrestler. This is his last year and the state tournament is this weekend (starting Friday); it will be the last time he wrestles. Jake missed wrestling in the state tournament last year due to a technicality (a grade turned in was the wrong grade, but they wouldn't change it in time to the correct grade he'd earned to allow him to qualify for state. Don't even get me started on their pissiness.) Last year he was seeded sixth or so, but he stood a decent chance to win state because he'd beaten the first and second seed already. (The seeds -- or order -- are determined by number of matches and wins and losses -- not who you've beaten. Jake didn't have as many matches as some of the other boys, so he was automatically seeded lower even though he'd beaten the higher-ups.)

This year, he was seeded third, which thrilled him. And then -- the glitch happened.

There is always a glitch.

Jake discovered he had ringworm on his elbow. Ringworm is a fungus, not an actual worm (both of which are gross, but hey, fungus isn't quite as). We took him immediately to the doctor on Tuesday because if a kid has ringworm, they are not allowed to wrestle. (Oh -- and you know, to get him cured. Because ringworm is very catchy.) The doctor gave him a prescription cream and told him that in five days, the ringworm would be considered dead and therefore not contagious and he could wrestle.

The tournament was in three days. Minor problem.

The boy who had spread the ringworm is his best friend, Dan. Whose dad is a doctor. Who told Jake that he could kill the ringworm faster by putting a small cotton ball of Clorox on the ringworm, tape a band aid over it and keep it on over-night. It would kill the ringworm and he would be able to wrestle.

To wrestle, they have to pass a "skin" test -- a medical doctor looks them over and decides for himself if someone is contagious or not.

When Jake put the Clorox on the spots? Major pain. Burning of the area. I couldn't believe that a kid who would gripe about a mild stomach ache would willingly burn his arm in order to qualify. But then, he is 17 and I have given up on 17 making sense. By morning, the spots looked awful -- the skin was burned (like an abrasion or a scrape that has scabbed over) and yet, we could still see the ringworm outline.

That's when he had the bright idea: sand his arm to look like he'd fallen onto concrete and no one would be the wiser. Hence the question to me to go sand his elbow.

I did refuse.

Carl, however, could not pass up the opportunity -- this was the kid, after all, who had driven Carl nuts over the last few days by being extremely difficult to wake up in the mornings and a royal pain on a few other occasions. I couldn't believe they were going to do this, but they were. And they did.

It didn't really look like much -- they concluded that it wasn't working well enough to be worth the pain. It did scratch up his arm a bit around the Clorox-induced abrasions, but that's about it.

The coach looked at it and thought he saw three more spots of ringworm popping up in the scraped area, so Jake pretty much gave up hope then of getting to wrestle.

The skin test was at 7 this evening. About 7:30 Jake called, whooping into the telephone, "I made it! I made it! I'm going to wrestle!"

Apparently, the doctor took one look at the abrasions and said, "Good grief, son, did you fall off a bike or something?" to which Jake replied, "Something like that." And the doctor said, "Wow, that must've hurt. Okay, you look clear. You're good to go."

Can you believe that? Sandpaper, the miracle cure.

You know, I bet stuff like this just does not happen up north. Or anywhere you know, actually civilized.

displaced

Carl has been on a big kick for the last couple of days to move. He'd move to L.A. in a heartbeat. This desire to move there started when I was screenwriting before, when we knew that I'd stand a much better chance at possibily, maybe, with every digit crossed, sell / get assignments. I was meeting with a lot of people after one of my scripts went out, and the general concensus seemed to be that if I lived there, they'd be able to work with me, mentor me into a position where they could get a studio to agree to me writing on assigment. The "they" are the ubiquitous producers, most of whom were just blathering niceties, but there were two or three genuine offers in there, and no way for me to follow up. (Well, the agent could have, but didn't, and what I was told was that she didn't because they would have to meet with me often and over a period of time before anything solidified, and flying out that often wasn't worth the gamble that someone might, eventually, hire me.)

Moving at that time was impossible, though...

Jake was getting more and more frustrated with school (he's ADD and Dysgraphic -- think "dyslexia" but with writing and organization), and he was having a lot of emotional turmoil due to those problems. Yanking him away from the positive things in his life -- his grandparents, his school friends -- seemed like a terrible risk to take. He might have excelled somewhere else, but he might have fallen into a vaccuum where no one knew him or reached out, and I was too worried what that might have done to him. Plus, we have a business here, a way to make a living (sometimes, she griped) and it's not like we could just transport what we do to another state.

But over the years, Carl has longed to move away, and the fact that L.A. has lots of galleries appeals to him immensely. (He does Raku pottery in his spare time, and has really impressed some people who've seen it recently -- one nationally acclaimed artist we know was urging us pretty vehemently to get his stuff into galleries, and several galleries have expressed an interest -- he just hasn't had the time to folluw up.) Also, the business of home remodeling in L.A. is far better than elsewhere, and even though what we currently do is industrial stuff (the money here is better in that field), what he loves is the remodeling and the artistic side of things. Granted, I'm sure there are people struggling out there, too, in remodeling, but I've got a lot of contacts from people who are so frustrated by not being able to find a good contractor (who can do the high-end stuff), that I think it wouldn't take long for Carl to have plenty of work.

There's just the little niggly question of money, as in, having enough to do something like that, and we just aren't there, yet. Plus, for me, there's the bigger emotional problem of leaving my parents when they're getting older and I've always been near to them and am close to them. It would kill them both, and I can already hear the guilt they'd pile on. (They piled on guilt when we bought this house because we were insistant on buying in south Baton Rouge and not north of the city where they are. Piled. On.) In spite of the guilt, though, I do enjoy them, and we get along great and I know I'd miss them and when they got older and needed help? I'd feel really awful for not being near them.

Still.

I long to move. I felt at home out there in a way I've never felt here. I really long to move. But I don't see how that will happen any time soon.

sex talk

My youngest son (17) came home from the movies last week looking a bit green. He walked in, shuddering. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, "That was the scariest thing I've ever seen in a movie." I asked him, "What?" because this kid is typically unfazed by anything in the horror genre. "Naked old people," he said. Off my look, "Something's Gotta Give. Naked old people. Uhhhhgggg." (another shudder) I laughed, then thought about Jack Nicholson's age and said, "Jack Nicholson's not that old, really. He's a couple of years older than your grandfather." I could see Jake calculate that this might mean his grandfather actually got naked occasionally and he recoiled, with, "Oh, MOM! That's just wrong. You didn't have to tell me that." And he hurried away as I cracked up laughing.

A few weeks before that, Carl and I had shopped for some tools; I wanted to do a little bit of remodeling and every time I want to do something, the things I need are always gone on one of our construction jobs. The plan was to buy me a couple of small hand tools, but they were having a sale and Carl gets really fired up over sales on tools, particularly if I want one, and I did fall in love with this nifty little air compressor and finish nail gun. Before I knew it, he'd put the set in the basket and away we went. (And I got a very nice commercial grade battery-powered drill.)

So I had the tools out in the kitchen when Luke (21) came home from college, and Luke looked over the tools with a level of lust and envy especially reserved for power tools, and he thought at first they were for Carl. Then I said nope, they were for me, and he frowned with annoyance and said, "How come Dad always gets YOU all the cool tools?" to which I replied without thinking, "Because I have sex with him."

I swear, I thought Luke was going to swallow the nail gun, his mouth dropped open so wide. And it's not that we aren't open about loving each other and, you know, having sex. I think the boys pretend we're in there playing cards or something. Luke turned about fourteen shades of red, put the nail gun down and said, "You really didn't have to say that. In fact, as long as I live, really, don't say that again."

Am I evil if I admit I wanted to try to work in the word "sex" in every sentence the rest of the night just to watch him feel mortified? It cracks me up that these two boys are so conservative about this, even though we have a normal family and Carl and I are easily affectionate (without grossness, truly).

Of course, a few weeks ago, my dad asked me something about sex and I think I sort of froze there, with my little brain cells skittering around looking for a place to hide, because in my entire life, I don't think my dad has said the word "sex" in my presence. I'm not entirely sure what I answered, either.

What goes around...

double dipping

You've probably seen the commercial where the guy picks up a chip, dips it in whatever dip it is they're advertising, takes one bite of the chip, loves the taste and then tries to sneak a second dip with the remainder of the chip to the complete consternation of the hostess of the party.

Every guy in the south that sees this commercial looks around like, "What? How is this a problem?"

twenty

Jake (my youngest son) called me when he left school today -- he sounded quietly upset, which is rare. Elyse (his girlfriend) had called. The brother of her best friend had been killed the night before in a drug-related shooting. He was twenty, and apparently, was dealing.

At twenty, I had a newborn baby, a new house (a fixer-upper which was so far gone, had we had any sense at all, we would have run screaming the other direction), very little money, and no real connection with the outside world since I wasn't working when Luke (oldest son) first came along. I remember fearing that I wouldn't have a clue about the dangers of the world and something terrible would happen to my kids, and like most moms, I fretted and worried about harm and making their world a safe place.

The first worries were harder, I thought -- trying to figure out what they needed when they were crying and not able to explain. It would be easier when they were walking and talking. And then when that happened, I was certain the next part was by far harder, because they could knock things over, fall and get hurt, run into the street, and so on. The next age, I was sure, would be easier.

Then they were riding bikes and wanting to go farther and farther away from the house, which was hard because I wanted them to grow up independent and self-sufficient. But safe. And how does a mom make that safe? So surely, the next age would be easier.

When they could drive, their world got bigger and bigger beyond any semblance or pretense of my having control, though I delude myself daily that since I'm very involved with them and we get along great, I'm somehow stemming the tide, standing between them and harm.

Something like this happens, and my heart breaks for that mom, because there is really no such thing as standing between our kids and harm. There is only the illusion. Some days, it is enough, and it works, if only because we got lucky.

Some days, we aren't lucky.

Twenty.

There is no "easier" age, is there?

winning and losing

Yesterday was the City tournament for wrestling, and Jake placed second in his weight-class. We expected him to be seriously disapointed and difficult to live with, since he badly wanted first, but he had a pretty decent attitude about it. I think it helped that his new girlfriend (who is quite pretty) was there, cheering him on and still thought he was ultra-cool for all the things he had accomplished. We could have told him how wonderful he was and he would have believed we would have been "just saying it" because we're the parents. Elyse can say it and it's true. Yay, Elyse. She's very sweet and she seems to fit in well, so that bodes well.

We ended up celebrating afterward with an impromtu dinner for family and friends. It was a last-minute, throw-everything together kind of meal which was hectic and disorganized, but ultimately, it went well, I thought (though I had to keep stifling yawns, I was so exhausted). A couple who have been friends for a while now but who'd never been to this house came and I think everyone enjoyed them. When they were leaving, though, Carl accidentally called the wife by the former wife's first name -- an easy mistake because they are so very similar in mannerisms. Second wife did not take that too happily, even though he was mortified and apologized. She was a little put out and said she wasn't going to visit again, then she changed her mind and said she was going to visit every day until he remembered what to call her. I'm not sure how much she was teasing there. Yikes.