This Is Where Friends Would Come In Handy

Husband informed me this morning, as he was walking out the door, that he would be having dinner out tonight and so would be home late.  "Okay," I said.  On the outside.

An hour or so later, Eighth Grader to-be asked if she could sleep over a friend's house tonight.  "Okay," I said.  On the outside.

We all went our separate ways for the day - Eighth Grader to sports practice, me to work, Sophomore to-be not yet out of bed - and that completely filled up all of the space and time otherwise available for restless contemplation of what I am doing with my life.  Until sports practice ended, at which time I retrieved Eighth Grader and brought her home to get ready for her fun night out.  Sophomore to-be was up by then, sort of.  She was vertical.  Yet unkempt.  In other words, she appeared to have no plans brewing.  Yay!  Time with Sophomore to-be!  She scowled at me when I asked if she had done the few chores I left for her to do, and I took this as confirmation that all was right with the world.

I went outside to tidy up my car while I waited for Eighth Grader to-be to finish getting ready.  What should I offer to do tonight? I wondered.  Dinner?  Shopping?  Shopping is always a winner.  I felt happy.  I went inside.  I went inside and almost ran smack into Sophomore to-be in the kitchen:  dressed, made up, wallet in hand.  "So-and-so is picking me up in a minute."

I did not feel happy anymore.

"I thought we could go shopping," I offered.  She nibbled the bait.  "Until when?"  Uh, wow.  "Never mind," I said on the outside.  On the inside, I threw up a little.

I may have then said some other things on the outside.  I stopped short of reminding my firstborn that I labored for twelve stressful hours to bring her into this world, because surely that is always top of mind for a teenager, making it unnecessary to point out the obvious fact that Mom wanting your attention always trumps everything and everyone else.  Wait, I think I did say all that.  It didn't resonate, apparently, as a girl in a piece of crap car pulled out of my driveway with my daughter in the passenger seat.

Honest to God, it was just this morning that I was thinking about all the marvelous things I want to do with my time once these kids grow up and get out of here.  I was dressing for work and imagining what it will be like to not have to do that someday.  Everyone will have a college education and my food bill will be slashed to almost nothing.  I can go anywhere, anytime, with anyone I want.  Now here I am with a perfectly free evening on my hands, out of the blue.  Know what I feel like doing?  Lying in the fetal position while stuffing potato chips in my face and watching Friends.  Because those are probably the only ones available on short notice.  Ladies and gentleman, in case you wanted to know, I invented pathetic.

I suppose I will take the other one to her friend's house and then go drive around in circles.  Maybe bring my journal with me.  Stop and get myself a giant hot fudge sundae and use my journal as a portable table for eating my giant hot fudge sundae.  Or I can go roam around a bookstore like I used to love to do, back when I didn't completely hate myself for not being committed enough to my writing.  I think they sell coffee and pastries at the bookstore.  That will work nicely to wash down the sundae.

I Can't Make This Stuff Up

Someone brought a dog to church yesterday.  I'm still shaking my head.

There was a baptism being held of a biggish baby boy - you know, a baby, but not exactly a newborn - and the proud parents had assembled enough supportive family to fill three pews at the front of the church.  There were two sets of grandparents, although the Grandmas sat separately from the Grandpas; a Godmother, clearly a sibling of the baby's mother, dressed appropriately for the occasion in a dress that barely cleared her rear end; a pair of preschool-aged twin boys, brothers to said baby, busily playing on their iPads; a cute little girl, sitting with Grandma, who I'm guessing belonged to Miss Hot Godmother; and in pew number three, Lucky the Labrador.  The woman who brought Lucky looked to be a sibling of one of the baby's parents, but as the adults of this family did not so much as look at each other throughout the entire baptismal experience, it's hard to say who was connected to whom.  And to be clear, Lucky was not a dog with a job to do.  He was just big, yellow shaggy animal trying to get comfortable on the floor inside pew number three.

Religion is not a subject I talk about with ease.  Case in point, I've never before mentioned here that I regularly attend church.  I struggle with faith as I imagine most people do.  After fitfully exploring other denominations in my twenties and thirties, I returned to the one I was raised in and I am doing the best I can to help the Tornadoes form a foundation in it.  I believe it's important for them to have, so that when they get done flopping around in the narcissistic, spiritually bereft cesspool of American youth, they will have a reference point for figuring out what's next.  Also, I find that I like the practice of my faith, much in the way I like working out and writing:  I like having done it.  Not so much having 4:00 Mass looming ahead of me on a hot, sunny Saturday afternoon.  But around 5:15, I feel pretty good.

So I'm not perfect, and I try not to judge.  But this family, with the biggish baby boy?  Oh, Lordy.  As it turned out, Lucky was the best behaved of the bunch.  I really tried not to stare, as I'm sure most everyone else tried not to, either (except for a couple of old ladies who were just not having it.  They stared with every ounce of their nun-raised indignation, dear things).  I tried not to stare when the twin boys paraded up with their family to the baptismal font with their iPads in hand; when one of them, grown bored with his baby brother's ceremony after ninety seconds, parked his butt on the steps of the altar and played his game for the crowd; when Lucky was walked outside to do his business just as the collection basket approached his owner.  I tried to avert my eyes when Bored Twin began beating on the pew with the cardboard box from his brother's candle.  It was a little harder to not see him dodging his mother with a smirk on his face as she tried to grab the front of his shirt.  Then he ran down the center aisle and out the door with this mother in pursuit, so, you know.  We all got back to business.

Lucky returned in time for Communion, but the concept seemed to baffle the entire family.  I'm not sure any of them had ever actually been to church before.  Which is fine, but begs the question:  why are you here now?  After some fidgeting and individual contemplation (like I said, zero interaction the entire time), a few of them chose to belatedly participate.  Namely, Hot Godmother and her offspring.  They cut the line in different places.  Hot Godmother did not wish to wait the extra second for her morsel of bread to be placed in her hand and instead snatched it from the woman's approaching fingers.  Her daughter, upon not finding this filling enough, returned to her seat and produced a large, noisy bag of snacks which kept us all occupied for the remainder of the service.

I think those old ladies would have liked to offer their congratulations to the parents afterwards.  Unfortunately, the whole hot mess practically ran to their cars.  Their three separate cars.  Parked very far away from each other.  What else can I say?  I'm guessing there was no after party for that baby boy.  On a positive note, I can now check "seeing a dog in church" off my list.

They Shall Remain Nameless If They Know What's Good For Them

I noticed that I haven't talked about the Tornadoes in a while.  That must have been nice for you, but it's over now. 

So, Seventh Grader.  Seventh Grader gets annoyed with me for not identifying her and her sister, Freshman, by name.  Why don't I just use their names?  she asks me.  Why did I even bother giving them names if I just think of them by label?  Well, Seventh Grader, because sometimes those labels save your life.  I don't mean in the way you think I mean.  That is, I'm not referring to how by thinly shielding their true identities on a public forum I might protect them from bad guys.  I'm talking about when, say, Seventh Grader decides to act like a whiny little puke, I have a way of reminding myself:  "Ah.  Seventh grade.  Where whiny little pukes are made."  And then I don't kill her.   

This is working out doubly well for Seventh Grader in particular, actually, because she bears a label which has already been broken in by her sister.  It has really only been whatever common sense God gave me plus a fine selection of parenting books on dealing with teenagers that stood between life and death for Freshman on many a day.  She's much more subdued now, a new level of maturity having emerged with her advancement to high school.  I hold out great hope that it continues to get better as time goes on.  But as Seventh Grader, and especially as Eighth Grader?  Freshman was among the whiniest, pukiest, most self-centered, stubbornest, most resistant to parenting, biggest slave-to-whiny-puke-conformity whiny pukes that ever whined or puked. 

Excuse me.  I think I blacked out for a minute.  Anyway, rough times, but they produced a bounty of experience that is serving to cushion the blow as Seventh Grader, perhaps involuntarily, acts out the same annoying crap for me.  Case in point:  the wildly vacillating adolescent identity crisis that encompasses homework completion.  Some days, Seventh Grader is the same Five Year Plan big dreamer about her future that she has oddly always been.  She's going Ivy League, she's building skyscrapers and then leaping them in a single bound.  Other days, she is a hot mess of At Least I'm Passing, Just Leave Me Alone!  Excessive television and/or Internet usage seems to be a trigger. 

Yesterday was a hot mess day.  I should have seen it coming.  Too many DVR'ed episodes of Glee.  Too many excited phone conversations.  The first three times I asked about homework I got an immediate "Yep!"  which means, of course, "Nope!"  The next two times I asked, she could barely pull herself up from the electronic haze to comprehend the question.  Before you point out that I shouldn't have to ask five times, just shut up.  I wasn't going to ask her at all, since she assured me over the weekend that if I just gave her some space to take responsibility for her work, she would do a much better job.  Another few hours went by after dinner and she remained simultaneously glued to her phone and the TV.  When it came time to shoo her up to bed, I couldn't resist but ask one more time. 

"Are you SURE you actually did your homework today?"

Blink. Blink.

"Because I can't help feeling like maybe you didn't do it."

Blink. 

"This is your chance to come clean.  Homework?  Did it?  Or was that all a story?"

Tears.  Heavy, instant, dramatic tears.  The whole, nearly verbatim outburst I heard two years ago from Freshman about how she can't do anything right, all I care about is school, it's all stupid, it's none of my business, and I think she threw in something about something else being stupid.  Maybe me.  Sigh.  My blood pressure didn't even blip.  "Go to bed," I told her.  And this morning she was back to being Wonder Girl. 

As little fun as I'm having with Middle School Motherosity, I do recall how very much more it sucked to be the child in this scenario.  Middle school blows chunks.  Always has.  Fortunately, if you pass, you get to leave and never go back.  Until your kids go.  My advice:  use the labels.  They help.

Keep out! Unless, you know, you don't feel like it.

Our house borders a pond and a dam that belong to the town we live in.  The pond is perfect for canoeing and kayaking, and the dam makes an attractive base for fishing or taking photographs or whatever one does on a dam.  It's a beautiful setup and was a big selling feature for us when we bought the house. 

While the pond and the dam are town property, the land leading up to said public outlets is not.  That's ours.  Occasionally, this becomes a point of debate between us and certain neighbors.  The words "town access" get bantered about.  Yes, we say, the Town can have access, if needed, to maintain the dam.  But it's our property.  No, they say, it's Town Access.  We live here, so that's us.  We'll be sending our kids down your way to muck around and possibly get injured while we're not watching them.  Then they usually walk away. 

Husband likes for me to believe that he has a tough streak, and he may, but if I were to pinpoint its location I'd have to place it in the flibbertygibber region.  This is a murky region, from which wildly fluctuating tolerance levels for trespassers originate:  friendly neighbor's kids want to take their canoe out?  He'll help them carry it.  Renters next door bring their barbecue party across the line, beers in hand, to let the kids pick up snails and throw rocks in the pond?  Husband will not formally protest or directly address the offenders.  But he does a fine job of looking out the window and sputtering obscenities.  If it goes on long enough, or if I make moves toward going out the door to put a stop to things, he will eventually spring into action.  By "spring into action" I mean he goes outside and shakes everybody's hand, asks the kids their names, and makes small talk about the unseasonable weather or whatnot.  Eventually the trespassers go home, no doubt believing that that neighbor guy they met at the park next door was really nice. 

The dam is broken at the moment, a situation that Husband brought to the town's attention and which they greatly appreciate him doing.  In response, they've asked permission to descend upon our pretty piece of land with heavy equipment and giant bags of material and lots of sweaty workers to fix what is broken.  As soon as the first excavator truck showed up, an alarm went off in my head. 

"This is going to confuse matters even more," I said to Husband.  "People are really going to believe it's town property when they see this mess."

Husband agreed.

"We have to put a sign up," I said.  "I'll get one tomorrow."

I read all of the signs at the hardware store, knowing that Husband would want me to get the kindest one possible.  I settled on one that said "Private Property" followed by a short list of unallowable behaviors.  As I left the store with my sign and wooden stake, I knew I had just kissed $2.18 goodbye for nothing.

The sign sat in the garage for two days.  In the evenings, after the sweaty workers left, strangers pulled up to our yard, traipsed across it, ducked beneath the yellow tape the town had put up to keep people off the broken dam and walked out on it to see what was being done.  I guess if they can't comprehend yellow tape, they aren't likely to comply with a sign.  But still, dude. 

It was another day before Husband relented to putting up the sign.  First he had to ask the sweaty workers for their opinions, which were favorable.  Wouldn't want the sweaty workers to not approve.  Then he asked if we could maybe cross out some of the unallowable behaviors first.  Um, no. 

After some discussion, we decided that eventually we'll go have a sign specially made that he can live with.  Something that gets the point across but won't endanger the chances of anyone liking him.  Something like "Private Property - our apologies" or "Private Property - coffee and doughnuts inside".  Meanwhile, we will weigh what kind of common sense the renters next door possess as they have complimented Husband for planting the nice row of arborvitae in the park. 

Speaking of When the Cat Dies

The cat has not died.  No worries.  She continues to systematically destroy every nice thing that we own, and to inspire an ever-mounting sense of regret in Husband that he did not put his foot down when we merged our homes together about her tagging along. 

He could have simply said there would be no room for her, since he was bringing enough furniture with him to take up all available space and eliminate any possibility of us buying new things together that would be ours.  (He may have even said this, come to think of it.  But who brings all of their entire life of furnishings into a second marriage?)   He could have accidentally left the door open and she could have slipped off into the woods before the car left the driveway, making both Husband and some lucky coyote happy.

But here she is, and of course there is room for her.  In fact, it turns out all of the rooms are for her.  In the absence of mice to hunt, as was her assigned vocation pre-merger, she has gained a good five pounds and spends many hours a day sprawled out across the house, flaunting her fuller figure.  When her current nap concludes, she jumps off the couch or bed with a prominent "thunk" that shakes the lighting fixtures, leaving behind a noticeable ring of cat hair on said furniture, stops to dig out a few new shreds of wood from whatever door jamb or chair leg she comes across on her way to selecting her next resting place and then promptly begins her next nap. And that is the sum of the cat's life. 

Husband has tried to curb her appetite for shredding wood by bubble-wrapping and plastic-wrapping cabinet corners and stairway rails and the legs of many objects.  This is a pretty effective deterrent, but makes me feel weird, like he may think any one of us could be a danger to the furnishings.  And when I explain the purpose of the wrapping to visitors, they usually respond with "I was wondering what that was for," which means, "that is all kinds of OCD weirdness right there."  Somewhere between Husband's OCD and my own condition (I call it "normal"), we find our bliss.  Unless the cat has climbed into my lap and dropped 14 pounds of dead, furry weight onto me until she's good and ready to withdraw, which is a surefire way to kill a blissful mood. 

Oh, cat.  By my count, you are the fourth cat I have ever had.  And you will be the last.  I am so done with pets, and I can't help but feel the teensiest compulsion to hurry things along this time so I can finally get some new things.  Cruel, you say?  Oh, I'm not going to hurt her.  Or stop feeding her, or anything else along those lines.  Tomorrow I'll probably pour her a saucer of coffee from my own mug as usual, and she'll thank me by shedding a second animal's worth of fur on my bed while I'm away all day, maybe slicing a few fresh stripes in the bathroom doorway.  We'll go on this way until, like all previous cats, she comes down with some bizarre cat ailment and slinks away to die, or doesn't slink away and forces me to take the less desirable route of removing her misery for her.  That's how it is with cats.  Whether we like it or not. 

If only all of the nice furniture stores around here would stop going out of business, I'd have a lot more patience.

The Powers of Observation

I just finished reading a collection of essays by E.B. White and ended up feeling like a complete loser by the time I was done. Like a loser who has done nothing and seen nothing and been nowhere. Not that this was a high adventure collection; mostly it was observational stuff about New York, Maine, Florida. Birds and woodland creatures. A dachshund. He threw in a few misspent youth stories, just to underscore some perilous experiences that hadn’t already occurred to me that I’ve missed out on by playing it safe for most of my adult life. I’m totally sure that’s why he included them. But mostly he didn’t directly write about himself. He wrote about the people and commonplace things around him, and he did this wryly and with specificity, and well enough that he was able to make a very successful full time living at it. I hate him a little bit. And I love him.

I’ve moved on to Thoreau now, whom I’ve learned E.B. White deeply admired and emulated to a certain degree. Where I believe he branched away from Thoreau was on the topic of humanity; Thoreau did not value humanity as highly as the world of nature, I’ve heard it said, and White found this wrongheaded. I like a man with a strong opinion. Hopefully I will find the inner wherewithal to draw my own conclusions after reading him myself, but chances are I will then double check them on Google.

When I say I played it safe, what I mean is I’ve lived my life in the complete opposite way than I intended to when I was 17 and planning my future. Literary career? Nope. Finance. Loft apartment in NYC, furnished in all white and chrome? Try a garrison on a cul de sac in small town New England, thirty miles from where those dreams were dreamed, and no nice things until the cat dies. Glamorous cocaine habit? (Remember, it was the 80s when I thought this all up. Cocaine habits seemed very glamorous at the time.) Reality: never touched the stuff, not interested, score one for coming to my senses. A stream of wealthy men acting as my personal patron of the arts with no strings attached? Journals brimming with exotic travel, exotic meals, exotic missteps, and astounding revelations? How about Motherosity and marriage, an unstamped passport, and last night I tried a new recipe from Cooking Light that turned out pretty well; next time I’ll use black olives instead of green ones.

I don’t know how these diversions in the road happen, but they seem to happen to a lot of people. Sometimes mine feels tragic, but fortunately most of the time I appreciate where I’ve ended up. E. B. White seemed to enjoy life without a lot of exotica, and found things to write about to boot, right? He would have made a terrific blogger. Maybe it’s time to see things differently. Maybe it’s time to see things, period. So here goes.

This morning I attended a meeting in a room with poor lighting and walls painted orange. They served breakfast, which I passed on, but I enjoyed the fragrant aroma of Tabasco sauce and ketchup on nearby eggs throughout the meeting. A woman in her fifties seated three chairs down from me sported several unfortunate streaks of blue and green and pink dye in the undertow of her hair which gave the effect of mold on faded blonde. She was a skincare specialist, she told us. This information merely enhanced the folly of the mold colors. I don’t remember what the actual meeting was about; however, it ended on time, which I respected, but at an hour that required me to park 97 rows from the building at work, which I will not enjoy later. And now, look at that, it’s later. Time to go and observe some things elsewhere.

Things Are Going Just As I Always Pictured Them

I think it's terrific how, as teenagers, we were encouraged to think we were the architects of our future.  That's right, little Christina (I knew about ninety Christinas in my era), just work hard and dream big, and you can write your own ticket!  The world is your oyster - well, yours and your husband Mike's (also ninety Michaels, they all seemed to be named Michael).    Whatever you want to be, you can be!  See the world!  Have the career of your dreams!  The sky is the limit!  It was all about jobs and fulfilling ambitions and that Thoreauvian Suck-The-Marrow-Out-Of-Life crap they made into a movie.

I admit, I bought into it.  I saw that movie more than once.  I even bought the movie.  For inspiration.  And to share with my own kids once they became teenagers.  Oh wait, kids?  I don't recall anyone mentioning kids during all of that dreamy brainwashing.  Motherosity?  Nope, didn't come up.  Not once.  Why would it?  We were supposed to be circling the globe, conquering new worlds, marvelling at how beautiful we all were.  Kids were what our parents had, those old farts.  We were better than that.

 So obviously, given all that fastidious planning and drive early on in life, I've just had yet another stellar weekend.  First, I spent a very restful Friday night sitting on the bleachers at Boondocks High, spectating for a middle school cheer competition.  There were a lot of kids there.  Not sure where they all came from.  On all sides of me were seated my fellow beautiful world conquerors, dressed in various sports jerseys and sucking on straws stuck into 80 ounce plastic cups, cups surely filled with the marrow of life.  I wasn't sure how I got there, really, until I remembered that one of those kids down there was mine.  Her team did well and placed second.  I was proud of them, but not so noticeably as some of the female Tom Bradys seated nearby me were disappointed in the results for their own kids' teams.

Saturday morning brought more cheer.  More kids.  More parents.  More bleachers.  Seventh Grader's team took second again!  Naturally.   With all this victory in the air, you'd think it was just another day in my amazing life, and you'd be right.  Because then I did what all those of my generation do after yet another (yawn!) inevitable win: I went grocery shopping.  And then! I engaged in a battle of Actions Reap Consequences with Seventh Grader, who was grounded, despite her athletic victories, for numerous homework violations. Fighting with teenagers over completing book projects on time was totally in my master plan for the future, so you know. As was having my head chewed off by Freshman, who had been busy all weekend with volunteer activities for her own cheer team and was clearly exhausted but this did not stop her from expecting to do whatever she wanted to do on Saturday night. I said no, you can't go out, and I paid the price. The price being whatever peace and quiet I thought I had coming for the remainder of the night. All in the plan. 

Sunday Funday: Freshman fight hangover, meet birthday party for four year old nephew. Apparently, my sister has a bunch of kids too. Not in my manual for the future, either, but by this time I know that a few chapters seem to have been skipped on the syllabus. Superheroes and balloons and many, many children, plus cake. Cake was certainly in the plan all along, but not necessarily with animal superheroes on it. Then again, everyone's entitled to a few "this never happened" memories, so maybe some crazy exotic night of imbibing with the beautiful people would have resulted in superhero cake being consumed in the original architecture. But we'll never know now, will we? Because I'm so damn tired from this weekend full of kids that I missed my alarm this morning, and was almost late for my glamorous job. In an office, with a computer and a water cooler. And a Keurig. Keurigs I did not see coming.

SnowMaGetMeOutofHere

Two feet of snow landed in these parts over the weekend.  My facebook newsfeed is littered with updates from sick-in-the-head snow lovers frolicking - with sleds and skis and frisky, adventure-seeking dogs - in the special white hell outside my window.  They find this fun, while I find myself at the absolute peak of cantankerous.  The peak!  I tell you.  It isn't pretty. 

But you know, to each his own.  If some people find being boxed inside a cold, washed out, colorless world for months on end to be the epitome of childlike joy, I guess I can't stop them from entertaining this delusionary idea.  And I don't try to, really.  I don't rain on their parade.  (Although I daresay that if I did, it might serve to wipe that snow-eating grin off their faces for a little while when they realize they have to first bite through the frozen topcrust to reach the fluffy fun underneath.)  So why, please tell me, on top of being cold and cranky and nearly colorblind from the complete lack of any tint in the atmosphere other than gray and brown and white, why must I be shamed?  Why must people try to change my mind?  Why must I look at the bright side?  Where exactly is that, anyway?  All I see is gray.  Is it bright somewhere?  I just changed the lightbulb over the washing machine, is that what they mean?  It's only a 40 watter.  Not very bright.  They're not trying to trick me into doing their laundry for them, are they? 

So I spent 72 hours cooped up at home with Husband, Freshman and Seventh Grader and truly made a valiant effort to spin it into a less than torturous experience.  Finished the book I was reading.  Cooked cheese and cream and potatoes all mixed up together and served up the resulting Pan of Comfort over many hours of nighttime board games.  Had Pan of Comfort seconds.  Had thirds.  Read the Freshman's assigned novel cover to cover, plus two newspapers.  Exerted a reasonably large amount of energy demanding that Husband devise a solution to the problem of me wanting to drive the fireplace poker into my temple rather than spend another minute fending off my claustrophobic case of cabin fever.  That was most likely the heavy doses of Pan of Comfort talking.  It turns out that eating large quantities of potatoes and cheese no longer creates an inner feeling of comfort for me.  It does create an inner feeling.  Just not that one.

Poor Husband.  He tries.  He took me for a walk.  It was outside.  I was cold.  It actually wasn't bad, to be honest.  The snow had stopped and the wind had temporarily died down, and some faint kind of yellowish glow from the sky reflected off the whiteness everywhere, rendering me blind so that I had to rely on him to keep me from meandering into the middle of the road and getting hit by a car.  It was like he was taking his pet mole out for some fresh air.  His legs are about twenty times longer than mine, so it was really more like a frantic scurry for me, enhanced with cold and blindness.  It was nice.  Then we went back home, and the madness descended upon me all over again. 

Now I'm reading The Road, which happened to be one of the few remaining unread books on my shelf and what I pulled down upon regaining my sight and needing something else to do so I wouldn't hurt anyone.  It was either read another book or eat all six of the chocolate pudding cups in the refrigerator, which I decided wouldn't feel so good on top of the lingering Pan of Comfort experience.  Did I choose well?  Considering I now find myself 100 pages into a novel about a post-apocalyptic world of gray ash and blackened trees and people wrapping plastic and ripped up coats on their feet to serve as "shoes" while they try to survive?  Um. 

Tonight will be better.  Tonight I will eat vegetables and not look out the window.  I will find something to watch on TV that features palm trees and blue skies.  I will not snarl.  I may toss The Road into the fireplace.  That will feel good, and will be warm.  It will be all right.

Two More Weeks Til the Super Bowl

I've just finished reading The Elements of Style for fun. That should sufficiently catch us all up on the thrill ride that is my life since I last tended to my blog. No doubt the construction of that last sentence also makes clear that I could probably stand to read it again, and perhaps this time I should take notes. Or, I don't know, maybe that's just my grammar paranoia showing. Maybe the sentence stands in completely correct form. At any rate, who knew that "finalize" is not a proper word but a bastardization borne of business-speak? Maybe everyone knows that. Or that "enormity" should only be used to express a sense of monstrous wickedness? Or that too much can be asked of a hyphen? 

Actually, hyphens are a particular pet peeve of mine, so I was on board with this sentiment. This morning I reacted with grinding teeth to the hypheniza...tion...I've lost confidence that I have just used a real word, but anyway, the word "powers" was used in a news article by a newspaper of strong repute, but was split like so:

 "power-
  s".

 Really, newspaper of strong repute? Have you no pride? You sicken me. I had to go with "you sicken me" because I still cannot keep straight the difference between "nauseous" and "nauseated", even after being schooled by Misters Strunk and White. For decades I have laid claim to feeling nauseous, when it turns out that is incorrect usage. Maybe it's a true statement, I don't know. I guess I'm asking. Have I been 'sickening to contemplate'? I did recently suffer a week's worth of upset stomach, but I don't believe anyone has contemplated me with said effect.

What this really boils down to is I am putting off watching football playoffs, which it appears I won't be able to put off for much longer. Husband has popped his head in here three times since the first game started to see what I was up to. "I'm finishing my book" only worked twice, since it was about a six page-long book, so I've resorted to "I'm writing my blog!" This inspired a disbelieving raise of eyebrows, but it was the truth. Really. I wrote my blog! But now I guess I am out of excuses. I can probably poke around in the kitchen for a few minutes, making an elaborate show of preparing potatoes for baking. But then I will for sure be doomed to yet another Sunday evening of sports-watching. God help me. There better be a stellar Downton Abbey episode waiting on that DVR for me later.

Winter. Rhymes With Splinter.

It has finally snowed. The trees look pretty. Now if it can begin the melting process, life will be good.

I hate winter. ...I guess I don't need to sugarcoat it like that, after all we're probably all adults. If winter were a person, I would hire Casino-style gangsters to surround it and reduce it to bloody wreckage using blunt weapons. No need to even drag it out to the desert first. Just let it bleed out right in its own frosty creation. It is the most despicable time of the year, and I have been in an increasingly foul mood since it began.

Reasons I would execute winter:

Snow sucks. Snow has served no purpose in my life since the fifth grade. We're talking nearly thirty years of pointlessness. Sure, I faked it when the Tornadoes were young enough to think frolicking in it for hours until their toes turned blue was fun. Those were the occasions when I snuck back inside the house at the earliest possible opportunity and waved all further encouragement to them through the window, watching from my nice, warm, dry vantage point as they gleefully crashed their sleds into the thorny bush at the bottom of the hill.

Snow Days suck. Did someone not tell the school system that Christmas vacation falls during winter? Is it really necessary to roll the dice like that and close school for a week when, inevitably, we are going to end up with another kajillion days off due to inclement weather? I say once the stockings are emptied, kids should get themselves to the freaking bus stop and go learn something. They'll get their time off, and it will suck. Maybe if we cancel Christmas vacation, though, I'll be less likely to tear their heads off on snow days when they ask if they can have all their friends over. But probably not, because the point, see, is that it snowed a whole freaking lot. And so driving is prohibitive. And I don't feel like risking my life to get your friends over here so they can empty our pantry of all the things that were supposed to last until next Thursday, when I will next be able to buy more groceries. But that's fine. We'll just eat saltines until then.

Being cold is hateful. Some idiot once said to me that they would rather be cold than hot because you can always put on more layers until you are no longer cold, but there is only so much you can do to cool off. That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. The smartest thing I've ever heard is "Let's buy a condo in Miami!" (It was only slightly smarter than when he said "Marry me!" but quite a lot smarter than when he said "Facebook is just a silly fad.") Sadly, we haven't bought a condo in Miami, because our house is full of expensive teenagers. So for now I must settle for piling on sweaters, because the only other solution for bone-weary coldness is to just go to bed and hibernate, and I can't do that. Because my house is full of teenagers.

If I continue enumerating the reasons that winter deserves to die, my foul mood will soar to heights from which I may not be able to return. Therefore, instead I extend this offer. To anyone who wishes to give me a free condominium in Miami, I will return the favor by giving something of equal or lesser value. Perhaps you need help figuring out how to use your new smartphone. Or maybe you are longing to provide for someone who will completely ignore your existence. Or you could have a lot of extra food lying about that you will just have to recklessly throw away if someone doesn't come by and hoover it all up. The answer to your dilemma is teenagers. And I know just where to get you some.

Working From Home, or Reindeer Are Ugly

Now that we have achieved a safe rear view distance from the mayhem of the Christmas season, lovely and magical though it was, I can begin thinking clearly again. Due to the arduous demands of overspending online and wrapping mass-produced items in paper with friendly/adorable reindeer printed on it, trivial things like thinking clearly and eating leafy green vegetables are set aside between Thanksgiving and Christmas, to be resumed only once the shredded scraps of four-dollars-per-roll reindeer paper have been disposed of and the mass-produced items held within have been assimilated without a trace into the overabundant collection of mass-produced items that everyone already owned. Now, finally, I can have a salad and reflect.

Strike that. School vacation. Continued mayhem, different flavor.

The Tornadoes are at that adorable age where they can neither be left to their own devices while I go to the office nor have any desire to spend a waking minute in the company of anyone older than themselves. This makes for a truly touching experience. Instead of spending this week engaged in quality activities with them, or putting on attractive clothes and leaving them in the paid care of others while I interact with other adults all day, both of which evoke fond memories of Christmas vacations past, I will pass the next several days ricocheting between pointlessly staring at the screens of my remote access workstation, knowing full well that I can't actually accomplish anything this way, and being coldly ignored by my own children in favor of a stream of other people's kids who are apparently never fed anything at their own homes.

Oh sure, I suppose I can still use this time to reflect. As long as none of my thoughts require more than three seconds to complete, as that is about how much time elapses between teenagers throwing open the pantry door to rustle every packaged food product inside before grabbing something and walking away with the door left open. I will repeatedly tear myself away from staring uselessly at my work screens to close that damn door and then yell uselessly down the stairs that the kitchen is now closed, dammit, and then I will return to staring uselessly at my work screens. Perhaps on my journeys from desk to pantry door, I will reflect. But before you start framing up helpful hints about reducing the quantity of packaged food choices and replacing it with healthier options that we can all prepare together, to the health and bonding benefit of all, let me point out that I've used the word "adorable" twice in an ironic manner, once to describe reindeer and another time the Tornadoes. In the last twenty-seven days, neither of them (the Tornadoes, that is, I can't speak for the reindeer) has turned down a single proffered sugar-laden baked treat. Trust me, they are not adorable right now. (Still the Tornadoes. Although, if you have ever seen an actual reindeer, well.) I will eat my hastily prepared salad over the kitchen sink in solitude, if it's all the same to you.

I have to leave you now, because it is time for the bright spot of my week. I have to place a call to my employer's tech help desk, located in an overfriendly Midwestern state, to seek assistance getting remote access set up on my new laptop. I can't wait to talk to an over friendly midwesterner. It might be the only cheerful voice directed at me that I hear all week.

The Fifty-Seventh Happiest Place On Earth (Approximately)

Last weekend, my Groom excitedly escorted me to his thirty year high school reunion. Here is where I pause, so as to recover from the multiple mind-blowing facts packed into that declarative sentence.

Anyway, we don't get out much these days. So preparing for this momentous evening entailed many wardrobe changes, hair adjustments, makeup applications, and checking of the profile in the mirror accompanied by the traditional sucking-in-of-the-stomach. Me, I just threw on some jeans and hung out on Facebook until he was ready. I kid!

(This is pretty dicey territory, you know. My Groom is generally not too thrilled about blogness featuring, well, him. But in fairness, he pretty much knew five minutes into the reunion that he would wind up here.)

We both cleaned up pretty thoroughly and put on something nice and drove for what felt like three and a half days to meet up with all of his old football buddies. I am not at all kidding when I tell you that my Groom was giddy with anticipation.

The reunion was held in the dingy back room of a dingy restaurant which probably should have given up about a decade ago, judging by the decor. Apparently, this is where all of the reunions have been held. The deterioration was painfully obvious even to those of us who had never been there before. And I haven't even gotten to the attendees yet. We were greeted in the dark parking lot by a woman and her husband out grabbing a last minute smoke before heading in to "face the music" as she put it. She immediately recognized my Groom. Sadly, he did not recognize her. Inside the lobby/pizza buffet area, we collected our name tags and a stapled alumni directory. On the directory cover we were pronounced "Blue and White Sponsors" of the reunion. My Groom confessed that he had "added a little extra" to the ticket charge to help with the exorbitant cost of putting on the event. My Groom is especially fond of attracting appreciation in an understated manner. I love this about him, partly because it often lends itself to comic moments of revealed naivety about what other people value. Like high school reunions, for instance.

Out of a graduating class of about three hundred, twenty-four made an appearance. I would say the overriding theme of the night for most of those present was Closure. Football buddies? Not so much. Mostly people to whom football players did not give the time of day. Just about everyone remembered my Groom. My Groom, however, recalled about five of them. Heads of hair? Also not so much. Plenty of big, round bellies, though. And lots and lots of Old. Old as far as the eye could see, which wasn't all that far since everyone kept reaching for their reading glasses and grumbling about the name tag font being too small.

Thankfully, one and all remembered my Groom as being a kind person. This helped when it came time to find a place to sit for dinner. We selected a table full of strangers (they were all tables full of strangers) and passed an enjoyable hour or so sharing a dinner of lukewarm Italian food and stories of Where We Are Now with three lovely couples whose names I never caught. My Groom's Blue and White Sponsor money helped provide all present with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert.

After dinner, someone produced a camera and corralled the twenty-three strangers plus my Groom to pose for a group picture. It didn't look right at all. It looked like my tall, full head of hair Groom standing in a crowd of amiable senior citizens. That was about all the reuniting he could take at that point, so we hugged a few strangers and left.

It's been an interesting few days watching my Groom absorb the lessons of this night. Lessons like not everyone found high school to be a glorious experience. And even if it was a glorious experience, people may not show up because life has not continued to be quite so glorious for them. And twenty-five dollars doesn't buy what it used to, such as chocolate sauce for the ice cream.

Anyway, it was a lovely evening and a nice way to wrap up a week away at Disney World with the Tornadoes. There is really nothing to say about our trip to Disney World. It went exactly the way such a trip is manufactured to go, and now we own headbands with mouse ears on them. And now, we are on to Christmas.

Only Sixteen Hundred Fifty-Six More Days

Eighth grader is taxing the limits of my Motherosity, let me tell you. Taxing it like a gainfully employed middle class American. Like cigarettes in New York City. If this kid pushes down any harder on my buttons today, I might burst into a live reenactment of Willy Wonka's elevator.

Motherosity is the word I use to describe the otherwise indescribable package of skills and characteristics required to raise decent children without dosing them daily with Benadryl. Patience, understanding, love, discipline, ability to multi-task...these are terms for amateur gardeners. Motherosity is a special brand of fierceness married to tenderness having an illicit affair with omniscience in regard to your child's whereabouts, doings and needs: Some days, all are content with their lot and life carries on. Other days, it's a hot mess.

Guess which day today is.

Today, for starters, is Monday. Monday is the day that comes after the weekend is over - hence, "weekend", signifying the end of the previous week - and thus most people regard as the time to get back to business. For eighth grader, this translates to Go To School and Then Come Home and Do Your Homework and Clean Your Room. How many Mondays have I said this now? Monday is a day when Sixth Grader has multiple activities to be shuttled off to attend, thereby rendering Eighth Grader alone for a brief period of time during which she could easily demonstrate to me how marvelously mature and ready she is for the TV she wants in her room and the laptop she wants for Christmas. How? Come Home and Do Your Homework and Clean Your Room. That's twice just this evening alone that I have spelled it out, and I bet you got it the first time.

Imagine for a moment that you are Eighth Grader. You have been in middle school for approximately fifty-one Mondays now, and with few exceptions the instructions on Mondays have sounded exactly the same. And the instructions are what again?

Go to school. Come home. Do your homework. Clean your room.

Imagine further that on Friday night, you went to a nine-thirty movie with your friends and then slept over one of those friend's houses. Imagine that on Saturday, you had several of your friends over your own house and, although you were instructed that said friends must go home at ten, you did not communicate this to said friends UNTIL ten, thereby postponing their ride-getting ability by an additional half hour. Step out on the imagining branch one more length and dress up in your Halloween costume, go trick-or-treating with your pack o' friends sans parents and then unexpectedly bring your entire pack-o'-friends home with you, on Sunday night as your mother is putting dinner on the table, and liberally spread them and their candy and their discarded costumes around the kitchen and family room, triggering the "must feed children" mechanism of the Motherosity so that the family's dinner for four is made to now feed nine, five of whom again don't seem to have any immediate plans to go home. (I will not bore you with the tedium that is Why Trick-or -Treating in November. I'm just grateful that it's over.)

Remember. You are in Eighth Grade. When I was in eighth grade, there was no way I would have been able to pack that much friend time into one weekend. Weekends belonged to my seventy hour a week working father, and most of them were dead silent except for his window rattling snoring on the living room couch. But this is not that childhood. Motherosity inflation has occurred such that the "I want your friends to hang out here so I can get to know them" mechanism has been activated and occasionally belched smoke from overuse. Fine. So, fun weekend. And now it's Monday. And what do we do on Monday?

Apparently, we go to the coffee shop with our friends after school and have the audacity to text our mother asking if she can bring us money. When our mother doesn't reply and we still have no money, apparently we then bring all of our friends home with us and assume they can "hang out". When my Groom, who was delegated shuttle-arounder of Sixth Grader today, firmly nixes this "hanging out," we place an angry call to our mother at work and proceed to have a screaming match with my Groom for my helpless enjoyment. We rile things up so severely that we induce Sixth Grader to tearfully join in, because the only thing that Sixth Grader ever wants is for everyone to be happy and get along perfectly. We finally acknowledge that our mother is on the phone with us and undoubtedly we hear her say "everyone must leave right now, go and clean your room.". Undoubtedly we hear this.

When our mother arrives home roughly an hour later, where are we? Are we cleaning our room? No. We are HANGING AROUND on the front steps outside WITH OUR FRIENDS because they are WAITING FOR THEIR RIDES. Which it seems they are calling for at this present moment. For the first time.

I wish I could say that bestowing the gift of "You're grounded" gave me some sense of satisfaction, some payoff for being the adult here. But really, without the Benadryl option, grounding is just a major pain in the ass. More monitoring, days of being looked at with scowling incredulity that she is really and truly grounded, and at the end of it, the blank response of an unremorseful teenager who does not get that someday her kids are going to put her through these same headaches and then, finally, she will get it and appreciate my Motherosity.

I consoled myself by counting up roughly how many more days until I move this child out of my house and into a college dorm. Preferably one that is close enough for her to come home on weekends for a home-cooked meal, but that requires her, on Mondays, to be back at school and off my watch.

Turn the Page

It seems incredibly unfair that it's practically the end of October again. Wasn't it just blazing hot and sticky outside? Weren't we just cooking burgers and dogs on the grill for lunch every day as if it were a dietary requirement?

I just finished reading this really terrible novel, on the cover of which it was proclaimed to be a "killer beach read", and I distinctly remember buying it for exactly that reason and with that plan in mind. Turns out, I am slightly repelled by "beach reads" whether or not I am at the beach. It took me until the first day of fall to pick the thing up and read it. Finishing it made me feel sad for those who may have wasted their precious summer hours reading it, until I realized that I, too, had invested time in it and that while I was doing so - while I wasn't looking up- my daughters both got a little bit older. Eighth Grader and Sixth Grader. Curse you, badly written beach read. Curse you.

This has been the first October in probably a dozen years that I have skipped all of my normal fall activities. Carving a jack-o-lantern. Eating pumpkin seeds. Picking apples. Baking apple things. Dedicating thought and debate to Halloween costumes for myself and the Tornadoes. The outside of my house is lightly adorned with Halloween decorations, but I can't take credit for that. That is what happens when you get married and go away for five days with the Groom, leaving your mother in charge of your kids and your home. Your mother decorates things. She also manages to find where you store your worn clothes that need to be dry-cleaned, and since you were careful to make sure every single bit of the household's actual laundry was done before you left town, she washes and dries your dry-cleaning. Fortunately, I've had time to go shopping to replace my only two cream colored tops, since I wasn't going to the pumpkin patch and all anyway. But I digress.

I suppose if the apple orchard promised to be brimming with fourteen year old boys, I would have been able to get Eighth Grader interested in going. Fourteen year old boys are apparently where it's at for her now. Can you think of anything less enticing, seriously? I am trying to
remain open and welcoming, I really am. But sometimes, when I look at her face and see how completely checked out she is while doing
pretty much any activity not involving hanging out with a boy, I just want to shake her little head. And then hand her some warm apple crisp, remind her we can watch the Great Pumpkin after dinner if she finishes all her homework. But who am I kidding? The Great Pumpkin cannot hold a candle to a moody adolescent boy who says he loves you but also likes four of your best friends. Plus, remember? I didn't make any apple crisp this year.

Not to be outdone, Sixth Grader has also come down with a case of the Boys. Unlike her sister, she still possesses the wherewithal to put them in their place when they act like little pukes toward her or her friends. They are easily dispensed of and in good time replaced. In between , she has still managed to find time to start writing her wish list for Christmas. She has begun slipping her list to me, carefully buried
inside pocket-sized packets of poetry she has written for the occasion, as a way to both butter me up and prove that she is clever and mature enough for the high-priced electronics on her list. She is currently my favorite. That doesn't mean she's getting the electronics. But I do like the effort.

This passage of time thing really slugged me in the gut yesterday afternoon. I was able to convince the girls to go costume shopping with me by acting as if it was the absolute last thing on Earth that I wanted to do (often does the trick). I spent the outing teetering between making Eighth Grader go back for more and more clothing to cover herself with, for crying out loud (no self- respecting bunny would go out in public without leggings under that frilly pink tutu, you can just forget about those white stockings, young lady) and gently reminding Sixth Grader that while I understand she likes the IDEA of looking creepy, inevitably she ends up asking to tone it down because she is scaring herself , so let's not waste money on weird smelling makeup that will get thrown away unused. It was great fun.

I took advantage of the fact that I was spending money on them to mention, numerous times, that when we got home I thought I might make some pumpkin muffins. Subliminally, what I said was that they should hang about the kitchen and inhale the aromas of love, possibly arguing over who would get to sit next to me while we watched Halloween specials later on.

Did this come to pass? Well. There were pumpkin muffins. As for aromas of love...if a can of pumpkin is opened while your daughters are outside talking about boys, does the can opener make a sound?

Oh Boy?...Oh Boy?

Oh, Blogosphere. Do you still exist?

Allow me to catch you up on a few outstanding matters. After .8 years of living in our "new" home together, two things have transpired. First, the last of the contractors has finally gone home. All of the home improvements that we have elected, and can currently afford, to do have been done. No more buzzing saws, drills, dust, making way for electricians and plumbers to cut holes in things, and parking in the street due to seventeen pickup trucks hogging all of our driveway space until their arbitrarily determined quitting time. It's just us. And the Tornadoes. And the Tornadoes' gazillion friends, eating all of our food and swimming in our pool. Serenity.

The second thing: Future Husband and I have finally decided when and where to get married.

We'd debated the available options on time and location until we could no longer kid ourselves about the fact that we were actually procrastinating about getting married at all. So we've decided on a date in the fall, and will hold the festivities right here at our house. Exciting, right? A wedding date! For me!

Except here's the thing. I'm thinking of not inviting Future Husband to the wedding. Not because I don't love him or don't want to actually be married to him. I'm thinking of not inviting him because, now that we have made these two decisions, there is a little bit of planning to do. In order for planning to commence, there must occasionally be a conversation about various items. And every time I initiate said conversation, Future Husband says, apparently reflexively, "Oh boy."

"Who do you think we should invite?"
"Oh boy."
"My photographer friend is available."
"Oh boy."
"We'll probably need a bartender, right?"
"Oh boy."

So last night, Future Husband and I were watching "Cake Boss" with the Tornadoes before bedtime. Cake Boss was making a wedding cake of epic proportions, as he tends to do, and this made me think that a traditional cake is not something I want at our party. So I ever so casually said to Future Husband, "Do you think we're going to need to have a cake?" And Future Husband said, "Oh boy." And this is when I got the idea that I might not invite him. I'll have to check with the photographer and see if that is workable. I'm sure it is. She's a very talented photographer.

Now listen here. I am no Bridezilla. Weddings, brides, ceremonies - these are nouns and that fall far out of my natural vocabulary. I was never one of those little girls who fantasized about her perfect wedding or perfect groom or perfectly blissful married future. The whole idea of marriage still makes me shiver slightly, mainly because I failed so spectacularly the first time I tried it. And? Didn't plan my first wedding, people. Other than my dress and the music selection, I left every stinking detail up to my mother and my bridal party. Didn't pick the venue, the photographer, the cake, the food - whatever other dozen decisions that had to be made to pull together someone else's vision of that day in my life, I let them go to it. It was the beginning of the end, and I acted like I knew it.

When I say, though, that Future Husband and I were procrastinating about getting married, what I mean is this: it feels like we already are married. Provided that marriage is supposed to feel like complete comfort and faith in being with this other person who is your partner, companion, and lover, and you can easily see yourself spending every day of the rest of your life with them. I don't know, maybe that's just me eating more vegetables. But I suspect it could resemble a good marriage. In my opinion, the point of following through with an actual wedding is to give our family and friends - and most significantly, our kids from other marriages - a means of officially acknowledging and celebrating our togetherness. And I was thinking that maybe it might be kind of a fun party to plan.

But the "Oh boy" reflex? Not fun to hear, lover boy. Not fun.

Thoughts On How Not Hungry I Am

Fourteen days remaining until the big 4-0. I have managed to reduce myself by six of the eight pounds I am gunning for. Okay, five. It WAS six, but then there was the Chinese Food For Dinner Debacle last night...merely the logical follow-up to the buffalo chicken mac and cheese I had eaten for lunch. Which I then topped off with a cocktail, failing to use lower calorie juice as the mixer. The Chinese Food for Dinner was topped off, I mean. Not the spicy pasta lunch. Because that would have been wrong.

So three pounds to go, with two weeks to make it happen. The great news is that I have achieved the desperately sought after "breaking of the range" that has been the bane of my weight management existence for the last five years. The bad news is that, with the exception of yesterday, I mostly feel like killing everyone in sight just so I can take their food. I'm not too picky about what the food is, either. I may have been tempted to pluck the partially eaten apple out of a complete stranger's hand in the elevator a few days ago, for instance.

My stomach is in a constant state of babble. I believe it is saying, "Seriously, woman. Get me that apple." Or "Would it be so hard for you to throw a cracker in this chicken and vegetable soup?" Or "I've had it up to HERE (stomach indicates dotted line slightly above thin layer of greek yogurt with fruit) with this yogurt. Where's the bacon? Where's my cheesy english muffin? Dammit, woman, this is NOT WHAT I ORDERED!"

I exaggerate. Really, it hasn't been so bad. I'm being very healthy about the whole thing. And I have some experience with this process, having repeated it in about twelve thousand variations since I was a teenager. Proper nutrition is a priority. Okay, reaching this completely superfluous goal by my birthday is actually the priority. But nutrition is right after that.

Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about the completely ridiculous statement that people keep uttering to me about 40 being "just a number". It's just a number! Really? I didn't think of that. Why isn't that comforting? Can anyone tell me? It's not that I'm exactly devastated over this pending birthday. No, not devastated. Angst-y and somewhat disappointed that so much is still undone. Also, curious about what lies ahead. Possibilities and surprises, certainly those lie ahead. Opportunity. Special moments. Also, menopause. Menopause lies ahead. Failing health. Death. So, some not so surprising things. If it's all the same to you, I think I will continue to regard this milestone as slightly more than "just a number." You don't have to play along. But the first person to utter that nonsensical platitude on my actual birthday will wear their slice of cake. Or pie. I'm hoping for key lime pie instead of cake. Now that I think about it, why don't you just go ahead and let that platitude rip - because honestly, I am really freaking hungry, and I don't necessarily want to share my 40th birthday key lime pie with any of you to begin with. Get your own pie.

...Sorry. That outburst was unnecessary. I blame it on low blood sugar. Okay, thanks for stopping by today. Fourteen days and counting.

Winning, Duh.

What a fantastic week I have been having! Simply beyond my wildest dreams. Really, the wonderfulness of each day has just compounded the cumulative joy coursing through my veins. Clearly, I am winning.

On Sunday morning, Future Husband and I managed to carve out a full two hours together. Seeing as I have barely laid eyes on him since that miraculous accomplishment, I remember those hours with a kind of nostalgic fondness. Looking back, I'd say it was foolish of us to squander our time lingering over a leisurely breakfast and talking about the future. What we should have been doing is drafting and running through a family haz mat plan , or boning up on our animal emergency triage skills. (It will be clear momentarily that I've just made an unfortunate pun; let's not get ahead of ourselves.). But no, we chose to devote two costly hours to speaking in full sentences, completing thoughts, and daring to dream. What can you do? What's done is done.

The weekend had gotten off to a bit of a rocky start, so I suppose we thought we deserved the break. We've been having some trouble with our washing machine, you see. About a week earlier, it went crazy and flooded a third of our newly finished basement. It seemed odd, since the washing machine does not even reside on the side of the basement that we finished, that it should deposit so much water onto the floor that it reached across the stairwell to be absorbed by the new carpet. Also, no soap. The final drain cycle, we supposed.

So we had begun the clean up process, called the washing machine repair people, missed being home in time to meet them during the appointed four hour window in the middle of the day, watched the laundry pile achieve the mountainous stage, banned all Tornado friends from visiting our house, and relocated Fifth Grader's chinchilla to higher ground in the first floor bathroom. Chinchilla did not care for her relocation. On Friday night, she decided to climb the side of her cage, possibly looking for a way out. She has very small toes. She lodged one of her very small toes in the corner of her cage, and hung there until Saturday morning when Fifth Grader came to say good morning. She then freaked out while Fifth Grader and I worked to free her. Which we did - free her - but not her toe. It broke off.

Cut to Fifth Grader, chinchilla and I rushing off to the animal hospital, chinchilla's wounded foot wrapped in a washcloth. Slow motion through three hours while chinchilla undergoes surgery to reconstruct her toe with what bone and flesh remains; vet explains painkiller and antibiotic administration requirements to an 11 year old girl; and three hundred dollars is extracted from my checking account. Fifth Grader also briefly complained during this experience that her knee was hurting her. "Huh," I think I said. Then I took them home, collected Seventh Grader, and sped off to spend some more money on lacrosse equipment.

If we leap from Spendthrift Saturday to just after our leisurely breakfast on Sunday, we will see Fifth Grader lovingly doling out chinchilla meds while slightly whimpering, "My knee hurts more than yesterday." If we then skip ahead slightly more, to about an hour after I (again) discounted her complaints of pain, we will begin to notice a very unpleasant aroma wafting up from the just dried basement. If we investigate this horrid smell, we find that incredibly stinky water is gushing into the basement through a hole in the wall, once again flooding both sides and this time getting the job done with finality.

Turns out, the washing machine is fine.

The septic tank? Not so much.

It's all pretty much a blur since then. Moments of awesomeness have included an evening at the laundromat, more money spent on more lacrosse equipment, the appearance and advancement of fever and cough in Seventh Grader, spilling Rodent Motrin on the sleeve of my "dry clean only" blouse, and...I know I'm forgetting something...oh! I did finally get fed up with Fifth Grader walking like Frankenstein's monster and simpering about what was OBVIOUSLY growing pains. To prove my point, I took her to see her doctor on Tuesday after dinner. After examining the little hypochondriac, the doctor bandied about comforting words like "MRI" and "orthopedic doctor", something about "possibly going in with a scope and cleaning out" her knee.

"SEE?" Fifth Grader practically screamed at me.

So right now I have to go check Seventh Grader's temperature. It was down to 100 this morning. Then I guess I better schedule that orthopedic appointment.

How Many Calories in Tiger Blood?

This morning I made a regretful decision. For three months, I have adamantly refused to have anything at all to do with a scale; yet, at 6 a.m. today, for reasons unexplainable, I decided to prove how smart I am by finally stepping aboard.

Oh, man. I am a big dummy.

I think Charlie Sheen must be partially to blame for this misstep. Watching his flagrant dismissal of reality - and clear descent into Cuckoo Land - play out on every available media outlet, I guess I caught a germ of his bravado. Momentarily forgetting that his brand of bravado is largely chemically induced. At any rate, his blameability is highly accessible right now. So I will take my own flagrant dismissal of the reality that one cannot claim her means of estimating her current weight to be the way her jeans fit on any given day, then presume that the reason these jeans are no longer fitting so well is because they must have shrunk in the wash - when, in fact, she wore them multiple times before washing again and this did not make them fit any better - I will point it in the direction of Mr. Tiger Blood In His Veins. He won't even notice.

More likely responsible is the fact that I just finished reading Bridget Jones's Diary. Yes, about fifteen years behind schedule, and long after having seen the movie. Naturally the book is much better; additionally hilarious knowing how the movie version was ultimately cast. Clever, clever casting. Yes, everybody already knew that by now. Shut up. My point: it is written in diary form, with a daily header featuring Ms. Jones's weight and various caloric intakes over the course of an eventful year. I couldn't help but notice that her weight range is basically my own weight range. I also couldn't help but notice how very range-y she was across this range, which caused me to contemplate how narrow my own range has become. Specifically, I seem to have lingered at the higher end of said range for the better part of five years now; most steadily at the low point of the higher range, occasionally ticking up to the high point, and practically never breaking through the low point to visit the middle range. In other words, I have spent five years losing and gaining the exact same five pounds, when what I wanted was to lose that plus maybe another three to five. You know, reach the lower range and then stay there. Three months had passed since I last tortured myself by checking my "progress". Reading this fictitious diary was thoroughly entertaining. Charlie Sheen is crazy. Let's step on that scale.

High point. High range. Nice.

Marry this information to the inescapable facts that in 38 days I will turn 40, and have NOT yet written my own blockbuster debut novel, and have NOT yet married the love of my life, and have NOT yet travelled outside this continent...Ladies and Gentlemen, I now present Me Careening Off the Self Esteem Cliff. You may kiss my ass.

Cue the crazed woman mentally assembling plan to at least reach high end of middle weight range by 40th birthday (in 38 DAYS). See crazed woman veer into CVS on way to work to buy bright yellow notebook for food journal and newest Clean Eating magazine in hopes of finding clean eating versions of edible foods (read: things full of cheese and potatoes and cream sauces). Tread lightly near snarling crazed woman who forced herself to eat fiber rich bar and orange for breakfast and has already written "green salad with chicken breast" in pen under Lunch, therefore having absolutely nothing to look forward to for the rest of the day. She is not to be toyed with, kiddies.

I take consolation in the following:

1. This yellow notebook is very cute, and perhaps will inspire my food journal writing
2. The love of my life has, in fact, put a ring on it
3. Quite a few of my girlfriends have already turned 40 and it does not seem to be end of the world for them
4. There is some scrumptious-looking manicotti on the cover of Clean Eating

Maybe this won't completely suck. Maybe I will write all about it over the next 38 days. Maybe if I buy a lottery ticket I will win millions, which I can spend on an extended stay at a luxurious European health spa - in EUROPE - where I will write freely all day while purifying myself with cucumber and melon-infused delectables.

God, I'm hungry.

She Ain't Heavy. She's My Grandmouse

Fifth Grader has been pestering me for a dog since the dawn of time. I blame this on dogs, for acting all frolicky and cute when they belong to other people. Not to disparage dogs without cause, I'm just saying this has not been my experience when they reside with me.

I have precisely two personal dog experiences to draw upon. The first was a Shepherd Collie mix that "belonged" to my little sister. It began "belonging" to her when she was about eight years old and I was in high school, during a miserable trip to the boonies of Maine to see my father's relatives. A visit to an aunt's house brought us in contact with a basket of fluffy puppies. I paid zero attention to the basket of fluffy puppies. I didn't like puppies, and my aunt's house smelled like cooked onions and turnip. I desperately wanted to get back in the car and begin the six hour drive home. At this point in my life, I was in rabid pursuit of securing myself a musician boyfriend. This down home family visit? Nothing but a waste of valuable boy hunting time. Maddeningly, a fluffy puppy in a box made the six hour drive home with us. I was beyond disgusted.

The puppy grew up and lived for about sixteen years, ultimately becoming a beloved companion to my father. I am able to appreciate the poignancy of this relationship mostly because I only had to live with the furball for about eighteen months. Sorry, Sis. I just wasn't a fan.

Dog Experience Number Two came along courtesy of Former Husband, who loved all things as long as they were brand new. The Tornadoes were quite young and totally unable to help take care of a demanding pet. I was working long hours to compensate for Former Husband's lack of same. Let's get a German Shepherd!

How I loved standing in the snow at 5 a.m. waiting for the dog to pee! What joy overcame me when she scarfed down my entire dinner while I helped a potty training girl back into her Pull up in the bathroom upstairs! The good times only multiplied as she grew bigger and stronger. Former Husband simply couldn't find the time between EBay auctions to take her to obedience class. Thus, I made it clear when we divorced that I did not wish to retain custody of the giant wild animal. I'm told that Former Husband found her a good home with a retired couple on an apple farm. And I called a moratorium on dogs as pets.

So as I said, Fifth Grader, who recalls our time with the giant wild animal in a slightly more rose-colored hue, has campaigned relentlessly for another dog for quite some time. For a while I chose to deflect the issue by ignoring it. Then came a bout of definitive "No"s. Then we moved, and I tried saying nothing so that Future Husband could take the fall. That wasn't so good for the relationship with Future Husband. Plan D:

"What might you settle for instead of a dog?"

"A rabbit?" Too smelly. "Rat?" Too gross. "Hamster?" "Guinea pig?" Yuck and double yuck. Then I recalled a co-worker from long ago who brought her pet chinchilla into the office for a visit. Its personality reminded me of a squirrel. I have never seen anyone with a pet chinchilla since. A rare, fuzzy pet with a perky personality - a perfect match for my non-conformist tween! It was decided.

It was decided almost three months ago, actually. Many hours have been spent since then on researching chins, preparing for a chin, looking for a chin, having our Craigslist responses to "chin needs home" ads blown off, and finally having our application to a Chin Rescue League declined because we could not name the exact brand of timothy hay we would provide (we decided the nice people at the Chin Rescue League might make excellent subjects for an animal episode of Hoarders, so ridiculously arduous is their re-homing approval process). A fully outfitted multi-level cage sat, unused, on its well supplied table for a month. Finally, we broke down. And went to a pet store.

Cut to this morning: Day Four of Fifth Grader's love affair with her new baby. It is indeed very cute and squirrel like in personality. And as I mentioned, it lives in a cage. Big plus. I have been very careful not to handle the little critter too much, wanting Fifth Grader to firmly establish with it that she is the Mama. A little more challenging has been minimizing the torrent of newborn care advice I find myself wanting to spew at her. It's her baby, after all. She's read the books. She needs to find her way. It will all be fine! But a routine would help her a lot. And that seems like not enough food in her bowl. And there may be another way to arrange things in that cage.

Okay, I am too young to play this role. Waay too young. I'll be upstairs if you need me.

New York, New York. Except Not.

A week ago yesterday, I was in New York City with the Tornadoes. It was Day Two of a three day trip which I had arranged months earlier as their "big" Christmas gift, and which began a week ago Friday with an excruciatingly slow bus ride in the middle of a blizzard.

Aside from the prolonged commute, Day One played out pretty much exactly as I had been rehearsing it in my head for two months: Infected with the energy of the city at night, we ignored the bitter cold and set off for Rockefeller Center, where we ice skated and then rode to the Top of the Rock and gazed out at the city surrounding us. The Tornadoes honored my request for a texting moratorium with ease. It was so magical, I didn't even mind that we had dinner at Olive Garden.

Day Two? Still bitterly cold out. My planned itinerary of museums, local eateries and general assimilation? Not so much. How about hours upon hours in Times Square inside Toys R Us, Aeropostale, Forever 21 and American Eagle? They are too different, Mom. They are multiple floors. How about TGI Fridays for lunch and Sbarro for dinner? And about that art you want us to see and possibly find inspiring. How about an eighty dollar hansom cab tour of Central Park instead? It's culture, Mom. See? The Friends fountain! You love Friends! And that school over there? That's where Buddy the Elf picked up his little brother! And here's where they got into their epic snowball fight! Culture! So what if the charming West African hansom cab operator said that the author of Stuart Little also wrote Alice in Wonderland. We have blankets!

We did follow the planned evening agenda of attending a show with the rest of our bus trip group. Putting aside the fact that our designated show, Billy Elliott, was positively riddled with foul language and inappropriate sexual references (which would lead, several days later, to Fifth Grader being taken into the hallway at school to "have a talk" with the Vice Principal, who is Australian and who happens to know the meaning behind those derogatory terms that Fifth Grader was "sharing" with her curious classmates), I'd say it was a delightful night of family fun. And I only had to tell Seventh Grader once to stop texting in the middle of the show.

A perfect ending to the evening, as I had envisioned (for two months), would have been to share animated discussion of the performance we had witnessed while also sharing a little after-show dessert. Almost as much fun was what we actually did: tromp on back to Times Square in skirts and nylons and heeled boots (still bitterly cold out, mind you) in order to retrieve Fifth Grader's cell phone, which she had accidentally left in a third floor dressing room of American Eagle earlier in the day. We then chose to retire for the night to our hot, dry-as-a-bone hotel room. This was a great idea, most notably because it provided just the missing environmental ingredient needed to push my burgeoning cold into full bloom.

A week ago today, I surrendered my plans to introduce the Tornadoes to Greenwich Village and SoHo. Instead, I sniffled and sneezed my way through Times Square - AGAIN - to help them frantically throw away their spending money on cheap t shirts and candy. Once that fun was had, I blew their minds. "Yes," I said, "I am perfectly okay with sitting in the hotel lobby for hours until the bus comes so you can text and play on your iPods." I settled them into the lobby, excused myself for fifteen minutes to clear out the nearest Duane Reade of all of its tissues and cold medicine, plus a quick stop at the only Dunkin' Donuts I had seen in three days, settled into a hotel lobby chair and died. When the bus arrived, I boarded and died again. I was resurrected about midday on Wednesday.

I'm so glad to have been able to take them to New York for an entire weekend. It is one of my favorite places on the planet. I'm equally glad to have transformed into writing the details of our special weekend. Sitting here in my toasty but well ventilated living room, with my sinuses clear and my day free of plans, I look back on the story that has just unfolded on my computer screen. And I wish to take back the fourteen times this weekend I have whined, "I am so bored."

I'm going to take a nap now.