Monday’s Lesson

Posted on August 29, 2011 | 1 comment

Sunday afternoon I took Em aside and apologized for having a bit of meltdown.  There had been a lot of tears in our house and she deserved some kind of explanation.  “The worst part about being pregnant Em is that you are so tired all of the time.  And you know how when you are tired you kind of cry a lot?  About mostly nothing?  Thanks for cheering me up, kiddo, but it really isn’t your responsibility to deal with me being a big baby.”

She thoughtfully explained how when you’re tired your eyes just make tons of tears and it isn’t your fault.  “You’re not a big, fat baby, Mom, don’t even call yourself a big, fat baby.”  In the spirit of melodrama only she and I can muster she had a few tears in the corners of her eyes for emphasis as she said it the second time.

“Hold up,” I stopped her.  “I didn’t say I was a big, FAT , baby!!”

And we laughed. By then we were at the pool.  She jumped out of the backseat grabbing her towel and said “I’ll carry this stuff, Mom”  and she hugged me.  “No matter what we always have a good time.”

Monday morning I was standing in the bathroom feeling just like my own mother when I said “Please return that hairbrush when you are finished.  It is the only one I have left.”

It was Em’s first day of kindergarten but it could have just as easily been her first day of middle school.  In the last few months she likes to get completely dressed, including doing her own hair in her room with the door closed so that there can be a satisfying and momentous reveal of her full ensemble.  It is a moment I relish.

She took the hairbrush and went in to her room, closing the door.  “Getting ready” can take any where from five to thirty minutes so I reminded her that she had a bus to catch this morning.  As if it could possibly have slipped her mind.

I brushed my hair, put on make up, lamented the fact that my thighs rub together when I am pregnant, applied baby powder to said thighs.  Paused, reflected on whether or not I might be ready to throw up, brushed my teeth.  Put on my make up.  She flung her door open.

She looked cute.  And had on a new, to her, hair-do.  A low side ponytail.  “See this, mom?  How it is like… down here?  This is how you can make a side ponytail a little bit less… rock star, ya know?”

“Really? You know who wears her hair like that a lot?”  She smiled and just laughed… “Are you trying to say I am NOT a rock star AND I am a big, fat baby?” I said.

She giggled all the way down the stairs until I couldn’t see her.  But I know she was shaking her head.  “You ARE a little bit of a rock star, Mom.”

Exhibit A: The side ponytail of a woman that is NOT a big, fat baby but only a little bit of a rockstar.

Exhibit B: The side ponytail of MY baby, and no matter how she wears her hair, a TOTAL rock star.

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hȯr-ˈmō-nəl: of, relating to, or effected by hormones

Posted on August 29, 2011 | 6 comments

I was standing in a crowd of people that all smelled a little like sweat and a lot like beer when he said “Hey, how the hell are you?”  And I smiled the “Oh wow, I haven’t seen you since high school” smile.

We exchanged some “You look greats” and a few “What have you been up to” kind of questions when I started to feel my cheeks get flushed.  There are obligatory “you look fantastic”s and then there are the kind that you can dish out to someone you knew long ago in a meaningful way.  These were definitely the kind of compliments that can make a gal stammer but not the kind that make you feel like you’re being hit on. 

He leaned against the wall and suddenly the crowd of people seemed to be gone.  I got all antsy and took a big swig of water just for something to do.  I could remember seeing that smile in the hallway when we were young and thinking I wish I had known him better because he always looked like he knew a funny secret.  He grinned and said “Just water for you, huh?”  and I smiled and gestured to my pregnant belly and somehow he managed to say in a way that didn’t sound like bullshit “oh wow, I hadn’t even noticed.” 

And he hugged me and I felt like my whole body was on fire. Like if I held on just a little longer I might know the secret that made him smile, too.   It was awkward when I let go and I said “I better be careful, I am a pro at making a scene” and my eyes welled up with tears inexplicably.  He smiled and hugged me again, dipped me like a movie star. 

“Me, too.” he said.  And that smile again. 

“Who cares about the scene, huh?” and I laughed.  “You just get this one life, right?” 

“Oh, I know that.  But do you?”

And I woke up.  That kind of wide awake from a dream where you turn to see if your alarm clock had gone off and then are surprised to find it is the middle of the night.  My first conscious thought was that I was going to blush when I saw him next.  And I rolled over and reached for MQD and he wasn’t in bed.  In the same breath I realized that MQD was gone (likely he had fallen asleep on the couch) but that the boy that made me blush and suggested that I was the one that needed to remember that we have just this one life had passed away a little over two years ago.

Analysis of one’s dreams is the height of navel-gazing in my book.  But this one really got me.  “You just get this one life” is my standard advice.  Why was I having it handed back to me?

I have remarked recently on the fearlessness with which MQD and I have taken this Marriage Bull by the horns.   I am, by nature, not one to take kindly to change.  I stay put.  It’s the Taurus in me, perhaps, that doesn’t want to give up combined with the laziness that is bred of insecurity.  But lately I have made great strides in that department.  For years it scared me to say out loud that I wanted something, the good old “don’t try and you never fail” hadn’t served me so well in my twenties.  By thirty I had so little to lose it seemed like a good idea to start wishing and trying.

Five years later I am trying and wishing my ass off.

MQD is a do-er not a talk-er.  It is inspiring.   I talked and talked about a baby that I wanted so desperately.  And science be damned, I think he made this baby happen.  Because he gets things done.  We sat up late nights and laughed and drank wine and planned on getting married “someday” and it was MQD that put on our shared google calendar “Go ring shopping.” I fell in love with a house and five days later he had a mortgage broker, a real estate agent and a plan.

Sometimes I feel like I am riding the coattails of his actions.  They may be our  dreams but much of the time it his actions  that get the ball rolling.  If pressed he’d tell me that my belief in him and my support is crucial to him having the courage to take these big steps.    We have a pretty perfect marital synergy in that respect.

So when I found myself sitting on the floor Sunday afternoon with my head in my hands, big fat tears rolling down my face I realized what it was that I wasn’t letting myself do.  That advice about how you only get one life?  That is just one of my inner mantras.  The other I have adopted in the last five years is the simple “fake it ’til you make it.”  It seems I have gotten a little too good at the latter.

It is so important to me to identify and reach for my dreams these days.  And in order to do that I need to feel positive and capable.  So I have focused extra hard on the “fake it” part, and believe it or not I have “made it.”  I feel good almost all of the time.

But in doing so I was failing to let myself feel afraid.  I just crammed it all back down so I could keep reaching for the next milestone, keep dreaming bigger.   Maybe what my dream visitor was encouraging me to do was to go ahead and voice my fear?  I am not sure yet if that is what he was telling me to do… but I know that after I said it all out loud I felt better.  So, I thought I’d better write it all down before I lose the courage it takes to be afraid.

I am terrified.  I am afraid I won’t be able to love this baby as much as I love Emily.  I am afraid I won’t be able to love MQD as much as I do now once I have to share my heart with the baby and Em.  I am afraid MQD will resent me not bringing in the income I am now. I am afraid that it will be five more years before I feel like myself inside my body and that I will be forty god damn years old next time I lose the “baby weight.”  I am afraid that I will repeat the mistakes I made in my last marriage.  I am afraid because it is all happening so fast and it is what I wanted so desperately.  What if I get what I have always said I wanted and I am still blue?

This weekend I came up with a bunch of questions and very few answers.  I’m still not sure if I am taking full advantage of “this one life.”   But I am present.  And I am feeling.  Even the shitty hormonal-pregnant-putting my baby on a school bus feelings.  I am even feeling those.  And I feel pretty okay.  The one answer that I managed to come up with that I completely believe is the one that will tide me over for a while. I sent MQD a text on Sunday post meltdown “I am scared, but in my “not crazy” mind I know we have what it takes.”

I went to sleep last night with the kind of burning eyes you can only get from a good cry.  And it felt good.  And I slept hard.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Parenting

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How do you measure…

Posted on August 26, 2011 | 1 comment

“Rent” asks the question  how do you measure a year?  They suggest you measure it in “in daylight, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee, in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.”

That sounds satisfactory to me.  But how do you measure two years?  On August 27, 2009 Emily started preschool.  She was excited.  And maybe a little nervous.

This morning, she jumped out of the car triumphantly. Headed in for her “Last Day” party!  Lucky for me she did not roll her eyes when I said “Go stand by the sign so I can take your picture.” Almost two years ago to the day.

That’s how I’d measure two years.  Two years = two bricks had she been standing up straight.

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Day 86: Go to the wrong side of the tracks

Posted on August 26, 2011 | 1 comment

I have not abandoned This Book Will Change Your Life contrary to the way it might appear.  But I have had my heart set on Day 85 playing out in a certain way.  Unfortunately, I have not had a chance to properly execute Day 85’s challenge… so I have made a heretofore unprecedented choice.  I am gonna skip it and come back to it.  A wild life, I lead, I tell you.

Day 86 is a simple challenge.  Simple by design and in execution.  “Go to the wrong side of the tracks.”

I quite literally cross a set of train tracks almost daily on my ride to work if I go through Carrboro.  And lately I have been driving through town whenever I have the chance. But I don’t know that there is a “wrong side” of the tracks in Carrboro.

The wrong side of the tracks…. One could say when I moved to Chapel Hill and in to the apartment with Em we lived on the wrong side of the tracks.  I tried to tell myself that I should feel safer because the cops drove by all the time, right?  This plan didn’t always work.  And after our place was broken in to one terrible afternoon I never really felt safe there, again.

It was home.  Em slept with me more often than not, because that was how I preferred it.  And I kicked a charlie bar under my front door handle and made do.

So, in the spirit of this challenge I drove by our old place today.  And while there were still quite a few ne’er-do-wells hanging around… it didn’t look so bad to me.  My life started anew right there.

But even there wasn’t really the wrong side of the tracks.  It was just a neighborhood full of hard working people.  Some of whom happened to be hard at work within… alternative  industries.

My favorite “side of the tracks” in Chapel Hill… the side of the tracks that was so wrong so many nights but always felt so right?       The Station, of course.  As a single mother I didn’t get out too awful much.  And then MQD and I started dating hot and heavy so going out seemed superfluous.   But when we went “out” there was only place we were headed.  Across the train tracks and to The Station.  Where you can laugh at the hipster kids and dance and drink PBR and shots of jaeger and bum a smoke on the deck until you are blue in the face and no one will mind.  MQD and I had plenty of sloppy nights at The Station.  And a few afternoons. My day drinkathon bachelorette party stopped at The Station.  MQD and I spent New Year’s there one year. We had our rehearsal dinner next door at The Southern Rail.

So, I think I have spent plenty of time on both “sides of the tracks” while here in Chapel Hill.   And in a few short weeks we’ll go clear across town to a new place.  Here’s hoping we end up on the right side over there in Hillsborough.  Because right or wrong, I am ready to stay put for a good long while.

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My Big Girl

Posted on August 25, 2011 | 1 comment

“Good night, kiddo.  Sleep tight.  I love you, and I am so proud of you. ”  I kissed her on the forehead last night.

“Good night, Mom.  I love you, too.  And I am really proud of myself!”

I was going to let her sleep in a few extra minutes this morning.  But as I walked upstairs to her bedroom and saw her light on, I smiled.  There she was.  Dressed.  Hair done.  She was ready.

She was ready.  And off she went.

 

 

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Stuff

Posted on August 23, 2011 | 5 comments

Your stuff.  It’s just stuff, right?

When my father sold the house I grew up in I discovered that many of my old albums had mildewed in the basement. My 45 of Matthew Wilder’s   “Break my Stride” was ruined.  The notes passed between friends in seventh grade math class.  They were illegible.

A lifetime of stuff was left behind with my marriage.  Letters to and from my ex-husband, photographs of the almost ten years we’d spent together.  The kitchen table that had been in the dining room of the home I grew up in.

But it was stuff.  Just stuff.

I moved out of my home at the beach between Thanksgiving and Christmas, 2007. I took all the pieces of my heart, my little girl and my Snoopy and I moved.  And I made a new home.  In that home was what was important.  A lot of love.  And my books.  And my shoes. And my Snoopy.

Books and shoes are not “just stuff.” They are my Things.

When I was a kid I had a terrible perm.  And buck teeth. And then I had braces.  And another less terrible perm.  And then I got bigger and I had straight teeth and no perm.

Time passed and lots of things changed but two things always stayed the same.

I have had a bookshelf in my home. I have had size 10 feet and fantastic shoes.

In that bookshelf I have  had every play I have ever been in, all of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Once and Future King, Shel Silverstein and quite a few Nancy Drews. On that shelf somewhere was a secret book safe that my mother made.  It held the key to my diary, a letter to a boy that never knew how much I loved him.  I have had more than a few pairs of flip flops, two pairs of combat boots, a couple of pairs of Chucks and some grown up shoes.  And my first pair of Doc Martens.

I went to college an overachiever and decided I felt more at home behind the bar.   I got married and divorced and married again.

I was enrolled and unenrolled in college, engaged and less than engaged in studying.  The plays, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Nancy Drews… they made friends with the feminist theory books, and the Buddhism texts and then they all made friends with the breastfeeding and nutrition books.   The book safe held a dime bag, Jer’s wedding band, a lock of Emily’s hair.  The combat boots and the Frankenstein-like platform shoes made friends with the Dansko clogs and the Birks.  The hundreds of pairs of flip flops.

And again, lots of things changed but some things stayed the same.

When you talk about  a person you might say “Oh… well the thing about her is…” and you describe an attribute that defines them.  I don’t know what that would be for me.  I think “the thing about me” for a long, long time has been my Things.  Not my Stuff.  Just my things, my books and my shoes. At least it was to me.

And then this week our offer was accepted on a house.  And suddenly we would be moving in to a new home.  A home where our family of three would become a family of four.  And I started to look around our house … imagining what I would pack. And I realized maybe I didn’t need my Things.  Maybe my Things were just Stuff.

Before I could stop myself I bagged up more then half of my books to donate to the library.  Romance novels, mysteries, biographies, paper backs and the like.  I kept a box of my childhood books, the Louisa May Alcott,  Ramona Quimby, Age 8.  I kept the plays, because you can’t just go get them at the library.   I kept a small assortment of sentimental books, the e.e. cummings we used in our wedding,  the tattered copy of On the Road and The Beat Reader that I carried around with my composition book from coffeehouse to coffeehouse as a youth.

Even the books I kept, I think most of them will find their way in to the attic for safe keeping.  I don’t think I need them to be on display, to somehow demonstrate who I am.  I laughed and told MQD that since I am both married and knocked up I must not have much need to live by John Waters decree “If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em!”

After I packed up the books I went outside to the laundry room that houses my stash of shoes.  MQD poked his head out at one point “Whatcha doing?”

“I just got rid of more than half my god damned books, I might as well go through my shoes.” He smartly said “Do you wanna be alone?”

My Doc Martens. With their alphabet shoelaces.  And the paint from some kind of scenery circa 1992.  When they closed Commander Salamander in Georgetown a few years ago I was glad I still had my Docs.  But this past weekend I decided a picture was enough.  I didn’t need to save them forever.

For the last few days I have wondered if getting rid of my Things meant Something.  Did I no longer believe that I was defined by my possessions?  Did I ever believe that was so?  Did I not want to move my Past in to the home that will become my Future?

Or is it simpler than that?  A mother of one can keep her head above water and still manage her piles of crap.  A working mother of two might be smart to have less shit.

In a few short weeks we will move into our home.  Me.  My husband.  Emily & Fisher.  Snoopy.  The baby.  And just a few Things.  No Stuff at all.

“And that’s all I need… what do you think I am, some kind of jerk or something…”

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Rock on, little lady!

Posted on August 17, 2011 | 2 comments

I am not very good at “trying not to get excited.”  Last night at about 9:15 we submitted an offer on a house.  Not just any house, but “the one.”  The House that could become “the one that got away” if it doesn’t work out.  And now we wait.

I have said to anyone that will listen today that I feel like I asked a girl to prom and she just stared at me.  Not yes, not no.  Just nothing.  I understand the dance.  The Negotiating Dance.  But I don’t enjoy it.  I can’t. I am too busy trying not to get excited.

So when we sat down to dinner tonight I didn’t expect to get hysterical giggles.  Maybe I should have.  Nobody makes me forget my troubles like the goons I live with.

MQD bursts out in to some spontaneous air drums and Em rolls her eyes. He says “You’d better get used to it.  I am gonna be embarrassing you for at LEAST fifteen more years.”

“You wish,” she replies.

MQD tends to adopt the same teenage manner of speech in response to Em’s.  “Do you even know what that MEANS?”

“Yeah, it means you HOPE you can embarrass me for fifteen years….”

“So, what are you gonna do?” he asks her.

She pauses  only briefly before she busts out her own sick air guitar.  Duh.  What do you think she is gonna do to combat your efforts to embarrass her with your air drumming?  Show you up with her fierce air guitar.  Puhleaze.

 

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Fast Track

Posted on August 17, 2011 | 3 comments

A week after we got married we were pregnant.  Last Thursday we started looking at real estate and this morning we put in an offer on a house.

Last night we went to kindergarten orientation.  I cried twice.  Once when she waved from the tippy top of the great big climbing apparatus on the playground  and again when she took my hand as we were leaving.

Considering the speed with which we like to get things done in this family … I think it is perfectly reasonable to feel like Em might graduate from high school before the end of the month.

 

 

 

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Cha Cha Cha!

Posted on August 5, 2011 | 15 comments

I wish this was gonna be about my most excellent Latin dance skills.  But sadly it is not.

Ever since Karen wrote the other day about her thoughts and feelings on the pregnancy body I have been keeping a mental checklist of thoughts on my own.  I really thought this go-round would be similar to my pregnancy with Em and that I’d find comfort in the fact that creepy weird pregnancy things that no one ever talks about would not sneak up on me.  I mean, I have done this before, right? Evidently that is not the case.

In the few short days I have been thinking about this I have come up with more than a few delightful side effects of pregnancy that have astounded me all over again.  Here they are in order of ascending grossness.

First sign of my struggle with the pregnancy body is that I stop looking in the mirror without my clothes on.  The only bathroom in our house with a shower is not large, but it does offer two fantastic features.  A window in the shower and a mirror that is not directly across from you.   The window means you don’t have to turn the lights on  in the morning, which I have always rather enjoyed and the mirror’s relationship to the bathtub means you do not have to actively avoid looking at your full-frontal naked self every morning when you get out of the shower.  This is always a perk, in my book, but even more so pregnant.  Consequently when Em and I hopped in the shower the other day after the swimming pool I was ill-prepared for her observation.

She is laughing. I am washing my hair.  Like a fool, I ask her “What?”

“Your boobs look like they have a chopped off hot dog sticking out of them.”

I’ll give that a minute to sink in.

Damn, kid.  She had ruined my illusion.  The illusion I had of myself with perfectly normal boobs.   I have seen enough boob both in real life and in umm… film and pictures to have a preferred boob style.  And let’s just say that hot dog nipples and enormous areolas nine shades darker than the skin tone surrounding them were not it.

How had I forgotten about this?  Sure, I have been gifted jugs a cup size larger than my normal of late, but in exchange I have had to trade in my perfectly normal nips (n squared, if you will) for this freak show.  And don’t get me started on the gigantic blue vein that should pop up any day now.

Moving on… in order of ascending grossness, you are both reminded and warned.    A week or so ago I realized I had an appointment with my midwife coming up and that I should probably remember to ask her if I can take a stool softener.  I know I can google it.  But I try to have one question.  It makes me feel like a “good patient” to have a question at each appointment.    Yes, I am that approval seeking.

While the constipation was unpleasant enough, it gets worse.   The fact that I had begun to envision the “ring of fire” that comes with a baby’s head crowning every time I tried to produce a dime sized turd was making me both worried and furious.  Worried that if these totally unsatisfying bowel movements were  making me cry and imagine the pain of labor that I’d never survive an actual unmedicated labor.  And furious that while I had been in the bathroom for upwards of twenty minutes the toilet still resembled a game of marbles.  One in which no one even brought a shooter.

So, I did the only thing I knew to do.  I drank a cup of real coffee.  And it was delicious.  And that morning’s drive to work was fabulous. I miss coffee.

Twenty  minutes after I got to my office I thought I was going to die.  I would be found dead. In the office bathroom.  A dent in the top of my head where it had caved in from the  sheer gravitational pull of the ferocious diarrhea I was experiencing.  Oh and my shirt would be ripped open.  Not (as you might expect) to give a sexy sort of Woman Ravaged on a Cover of A Romance Novel look (and you are supposed to have already forgotten about the hotdog nipples and the diarrhea in order for that imagery to be effective) but because I thought I was having a motherfucking heart attack and I needed to see if my heart was, in fact, beating on the outside of my chest from the caffeine.

Lesson learned.  While the coffee did produce the opposite effect of constipation, it was no more desirable.

Flash forward to the next day.  Same intestinal disaster. With the added bonus of vomiting.  I am coming up on day five of this good time.  This morning as I wretched in to a trash can and wondered if I might be able to get upstairs to the other bathroom before “the spirit” moved me again I looked down to the floor.    “Thumbs Up!” said the cheerful giraffe sticker Em had stuck to the floor.  I had no choice but to laugh.  Thumbs up, alright. Up my ass if I am gonna get anything done today besides sit around in the bathroom.

So, that’s the top three things I have forgotten about pregnancy so far.  Freak show hot dog nipples, constipation and it’s bitch of a sister diarrhea.

In other news, it’s Casual Friday for me.  Pigtails, flip-flops, my favorite crooked glasses and my boombox belt buckle.  While you may disapprove of my freaky nipple and poop talk, you have got to applaud my efforts at taking a picture of a belt buckle (that I can not see) with my phone.   For you.  I do it all for you.

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Nonsense, Parenting, Pregnancy

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Three Reasons I Have the Best Kid Ever

Posted on August 2, 2011 | 5 comments

I don’t talk a lot about the reasons why Emily is the best kid ever.  (And before you convince yourself that I am already screwing up the new kid in-utero, know that we have addressed this.  Em will be the “best kid ever” and Baby D, as Mike as dubbed him/her will be “the best baby ever.”)  But damn that kid slays me daily.

I have found myself, at sixteen weeks pregnant, smack dab in the midst of “no longer first semester crippling tired” but still exhausted.   Definitely pregnant looking, not just fat as hell, but not yet  comfortable with the emerging pregnant body that I had somehow managed to totally forget was going to appear. And so hormonally driven to the point that when I got home from work yesterday evening and MQD was making dinner and  turned to switch his ipod over to The Gravy Boys, playing Happy, a song we danced to at our wedding I pulled my hands back from him (hands he’d taken in his, lovingly, presumably to dance with me) screeching “I have BANANA on my hands, I can smell it!  It’s disgusting.”  I’m a peach recently.  (And incapable of linear thought, evidently, but stay with me. )

So, that’s me the last few days. I sing the praises of the Husband on the regular, like a proper newlywed, but back to Emily.  That kid has kept my cranky at bay quite a bit lately.  Last night, amidst my grumpiness, we snuggled up on the couch the three,  (four, no five, cats and dogs love sharks, who knew!) to watch some Shark Week.  I promptly fell in to a catatonic sleep.  I could hear Em & MQD go upstairs to read a book and get her tucked in to bed.  I could hear MQD come back downstairs and go in the kitchen.  I was willing myself up off the couch to deliver my kiss goodnight and failing miserably when I heard her little feet coming down the stairs.

Anyone with children knows they sound like a herd of elephants when they walk around the house (pitter patter of little feet, my ass) unless they are returning downstairs after being put to bed.  Then they are quiet as mice.  The magic of being a parent allows me to sleep through being stepped on by the dog, sat on by my 40 pound kid and Shark Week “turned up to 11” and still sit upright when I hear the little lady has popped out of bed and is sneaking down the stairs.  Just as I started to say “Em, go back to bed, I am coming right up” I see her face. Something about her eyes stops me and I don’t say a word.  She puts her arms around my neck and said “You’re so tired, mama, just go to bed.  I came down here to get my hug and kiss.  See you in the morning, now you get some sleep.”

Determined to stay grumpy I stumbled towards the bedroom.  As soon as I lay down, however, I smiled.  That kid.  She is kinder than I even aspire to be.

In keeping with the spirit of my Bad Mood That Will Not Cease I developed a crippling hangover style headache about five minutes after I went to bed last night.  So, I got up, grabbed an ice pack and hit the couch.  MQD had (again, lovingly, dammit this family is making me look like an asshole!) joined me in bed to hold my hand, asking me “Is there anything I can do?” moments before falling promptly to sleep.  He can fall asleep in record time.  Quite possibly even faster than Fisher.  There is nothing more irritating than being tired, incapable of falling asleep and surrounded by slumbering loved ones.  And besides, only when everyone is asleep can I watch truly shitty television in secrecy.  And eat ice cream from the container.

All of that to say when I woke up this morning I wasn’t thrilled to be awake.  After just  a handful of hours of fitful sleep I pried my eyes open to say goodbye to MQD before he left for work.  “Is Em up?” I asked  “Yep.  I brushed her hair.  She is putting away her laundry.”  Music to my ears!!

Not only do I have the kindest child on earth, I also seem to have spawned a kid that loves to organize.  When she was overtired after a trip to Disney and a a few long days on vacation, what did she do?  Retire to her room to organize her suitcase.  When she is cranky from a long day at the pool and no nap where does she run off to?  Her room, to organize her markers.  While some parents might awake on a Saturday to the sound of silence, bolt out of bed and run to find their kid, dreading the disaster they will most surely find, I wake up late on a Saturday to find her cleaning her room.

I popped my head in to her room before jumping in the shower to see her smiling, organizing her socks.  “This top drawer gets so messy.  Before I put away my laundry it needs to be more organized.”

She is kind.  She is tidy.  Reasons one and two Em is the best kid ever.    Reason number three is short and sweet.  That kid is funny.

I was in the bathroom putting my make up on when she came up the stairs, slapping her knee and shaking her head.  When she was three or four  I taught her to say “a real knee-slapper” in response to someone’s joke. Probably around the same time I taught her to roll her eyes, when I first began to believe sarcasm was a quality to be cultivated in a child.  She still rolls her eyes, much to my chagrin.  But she also still slaps her knee, much to my delight.  So, knee slapping away, she is coming up the stairs.  “What’s so funny?”

“How many times do you think Fisher had breakfast today?”  I pause,  unsure of when the punchline is coming.  “Well… Two!  maybe even three!!  I fed him while you were in the shower.  I just saw he is eating AGAIN, so you must have fed him when you went downstairs to get dressed.   Oh man, I bet Dad fed him this morning, too…” and she strolls back into her room to finish tidying up, giggling to herself.

It was not particularly funny, the dog eating twice, possibly three times this morning.  It was her delivery.  She could give a rat’s ass if I thought it was funny.  She was amused.  She shared. But mostly it was for her.  Cracking herself up.  Just for her own entertainment.  Takes after her mother.

Em is a delightful reminder.  Be kind.  Clean up after yourself.  And most importantly, entertain yourself.  No one else is as funny as you.


Unless you live with these clowns.  These two make me happy I never get rid of the crap in my “costume box.”  Silver lamé and a fur buff make for some pretty hard core fun.

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