Excitement on the side

Rainy day blues

Posted on March 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

Not an hour after yesterday’s post was finished I caught a case of the rainy day blues. And promptly burst in to tears while cooking diner. Ever my knight in shining armor MQD left immediately to get wine.

The wine improved my mood here and there . I was not crying but still cranky. Cranky enough to be less than pleased with Emily as she goofed off while we were supposed to be cleaning up her room prior to bedtime. She spilled her glass of water, “Dammit, Emily” I said, to myself, or so I thought. She burst in to tears. “You called me a name! It breaks my heart when you call me names!” Sigh… I did NOT call you a name, and what the fuck do you mean “it breaks my heart” like I do this all of the time!! This flair for the dramatic, where does THAT come from? Heh. We addressed these points, calmly and finished picking up her room.

All was right in the world, and glass of wine in hand we read a few “days” worth of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I leaned over to give her a kiss good night, and her hands on either side of my face, they always feel so small. She seems so big to me, until she is kissing me good night and I can feel her tiny, warm hands against my cheeks, her kisses just as sweet as when she was so very small. “Mom, I love to kiss you… when you have wine your breath tastes so good.”

I learned two things last night. The first – it is a far greater wrongdoing in my house to name-call than it is to swear. The second – Wine breath is perceived as novel. I think both of these things stand as a testament to my superior parenting.

*Special thanks to my mom for making this miracle happen… Solo time at a bar, mid day. There is nothing sweeter. And yes, that is my smile reflected in the brass of a beer tap.

Day 81: Celebrate nature

Posted on March 30, 2011 | 4 comments

Day 81: Celebrate Nature :Lure a fly on to this page and swat it here.

I can’t find anything celebratory about killing a fly. And I think this is actually the second time in this book they have asked you to kill an insect. Hrrmph.

In an effort to “celebrate nature” today I did snap a quick picture out my office door. But a picture can’t capture the sound of the thunderstorm that is rolling through Chapel Hill right now, or the way the thunder claps combine with Simon & Garfunkel’s 59th Street Bridge Song to make for a beautiful morning.

I put a fair amount of effort in to enjoying an average rainy day. Rainy days are not my favorite. I am a sunshine fan, but without the rainy days you can’t appreciate the days with the sun on your face quite the same way.

But a thunderstorm? I have no trouble enjoying a thunderstorm. The way the air is warmer and cooler all at once. Early to mid 1980s – Sitting in the trunk of our car, the seats folded down, the scent of sleeping bags and popcorn combine with the smell of the rain. My parents would pull the car up to the very edge of our garage, our steep driveway allowing it to feel like we would fall off the edge of the universe if we jumped from the car’s warm, dry trunk in to the rain.

I learned to appreciate a thunderstorm on those summer evenings. More often than not by the time we got our sleeping bags arranged just so, our stuffed animals lined up, our pillows fluffed up, our popcorn popped… the storm would be nearly passing. But we enjoyed the process, the process of getting ready to enjoy the storm that pulled us in from the back yard, or off of our bicycles early that evening. Similarly, anyone with small children knows that if the lights go out, simply bring in wood for the fireplace, gather around the hearth and get ready to roast marshmallows with a favorite book. Your power will come back on as soon as you get settled. I think I learned a lot about embracing the unexpected, finding the joy in the small moments, from those evenings sitting in the trunk of that shitty station wagon.

Like so much of my adult life… it’s balance. I’ll take a rainy day. Because the sunshine is always right around the corner.

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

~T.S. Eliot

4 Comments

Posted in Family, This Book Will Change Your Life

Tagged Back pain, Chiropractor, Seasons of life, This Book Will Change Your Life, Thunderstorms, Weather

So, Dad…

Posted on March 23, 2011 | 4 comments

So, Em has decided she wants to call Mike “Dad” after we get married. Daddy will stay Daddy and Mike can be Dad. It’s pretty cute. The other night I asked her if that was still her plan. She says “yup.” Mike says “You can try it out if you want, see how it sounds.” She rolls her eyes and says “Well, what would I say?” Mike says “Whatever you want…”

She pauses for dramatic effect…. “Dad, can I get a tattoo?”

I almost fell out of my chair.

He is in so much trouble.

4 Comments

Posted in Family, Tattoos

Tagged Parenting, Tattoos

Day 80: Start eating a piece of furniture…

Posted on March 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

Day 80: Start eating a piece of furniture. Frequently you hear a parent say that there is nothing their children can do that they haven’t already done. Em is exceptional in many ways. And today’s challenge is a reminder of one of them. I have never eaten a chair, or at least not that I can recall. She has.

These chairs were originally in my grandmother’s kitchen. Then they were in the house I grew up in. I believe there were originally six. Then there were four. Now I have two of them in my bedroom. They serve as a reminder of time gone by.

I hope someday Em has that gnawed on chair in a corner of her bedroom. And I hope her children ask her if it’s really true what their grandmother says… that she was the one that chewed it.

Day 79: Become an Expert on Today

Posted on March 22, 2011 | 2 comments

Today’s challenge is the kind of challenge I enjoy when I am feeling overwhelmed. It seems like the rest of my universe has lots of Big Tasks to be completed. Big Tasks, comprised of tiny little tasks, some of which are in my head, some of them on scraps of paper, many of them on lists on my phone, on calendars with alarms attached, some of them existing only in my heart. Sometimes you need a simple directive.

Day 79: Become an expert on today. A quick trip to Wikipedia’s entry about the 22nd day of March has me feeling like I learned a fair amount. And isn’t that what qualifies a person as an expert these days? A quick google search on the subject?

In doing my research I got sidetracked, as one is apt to do… On March 22, 1978 Karl Wallenda of the Flying Wallendas died. He fell from a tight-rope.

If you weren’t raised in my house you probably didn’t think about the Flying Wallendas all that often. But we were big on the circus as kids, and even bigger on jumping out of trees in the back yard. I know I have asked Em to get down from somewhere, asking her if she “thinks she is one of the Flying Wallendas?”

I’m going to call it a day. If knowing that Karl Wallenda died on March 22 isn’t enough to make me an expert, then I don’t wanna be one.

On another day I might have kept reading… but I kinda feel like I have a lot of shit already figured out. I might not really be an expert on March 22. but I am an expert on crying. I am emotional, wildly so, some might say. And yesterday someone I love dearly had a moment in time where he realized, or perhaps only remembered, the tremendous joy that one can feel in just letting those big, fat tears roll down your face. And my heart was full and I felt like the smartest woman alive. Because I already knew that. It’s not fair to only let the tears escape when you can’t hold them in, when they are welling up deep from grief or despair. The sweetest tears are those that surprise you. The tears that come from a place of joy and of love. It’s easy to forget that these tears exist. And if you spend too long trying to contain your tears they are the first to elude you.

If this was handwritten there’d be big, fat splotches of tears on the page here. Because my life changed irrevocably on March 22nd, 2010. I don’t think it was an accident that I sat down to write this today. MQD, Em and I spent the first night in our home together on March 22. It was months before he proposed. And more than a year before we will be wed. But to me… and I believe to him… it was the no turning back moment. It was the day we became a family. Granted we are no family of flying Wallendas. But I think we bring a certain something to the party.

2 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting, This Book Will Change Your Life, Wedding Planning

Tagged Crying, Flying Wallendas, Parenting, This Book Will Change Your Life

Day 78: So about your friends…

Posted on March 21, 2011 | 6 comments

Day 78: How politically correct is your circle of friends?

Not very. Some of them are not even particularly well behaved. Very few of them ever bite their tongues. But they are mine. And they’ve known me since before I had the good sense to censor myself. And they love me anyway.

6 Comments

Posted in Family, This Book Will Change Your Life

Tagged Dharma Coffeehouse, Family, Old friends, This Book Will Change Your Life

A boob blast from the past…

Posted on March 10, 2011 | 9 comments

A story for Karen…

Emily was teeny, maybe two or three weeks old, small enough that I could still nurse her and hold her with one arm. I hadn’t yet mastered the nursing in the sling so I walked around with her passed out on my forearm a lot.

It was the middle of the afternoon and our cable went out. (Acckkk!! I had a teeny baby, I never watched so much TV!) I called and was pleased that they could send someone right over. The cable guy comes to the door. I was even more pleased. Very, very cute… maybe 25. At this point in new momdom I have not seen a human being to whom I am not related in weeks. I look down and Emily is nursing away and my boob is pretty well hidden. I had not yet perfected the boob out the armpit hole of a wife beater (there is so much wrong with that image) that became my preferred method. So, instead of the zip up hoodie and tank top I later came to live in I was still regularly wearing one of three rugby style shirts that buttoned up the front. I had my boob popped out the middle.

I go out on the deck to let the guy know to come in downstairs. I run down and let him in so the dog doesn’t jump all over him, he chats with me for a second and I go back inside, still thinking how cute he is. He hollers upstairs that he needs to go in the back yard so I bring Fisher back inside.

Eventually, I had to sign the form so I met him on the stairs coming down from the deck. All of this with a three week old, eight pound baby asleep on my forearm. I could make dinner that way, change my clothes, pee, read a book, cross stitch. It was like I could almost forget she was there. I’m standing on the steps, several steps above the adorable Cable Guy. We are talking about the cable line and the adorable Cable Guy, he is staring at me. Deep, staring in to my eyes. So much so that I might have even blushed.

I am walking up the stairs thinking to myself, you know mama, you still got it. He was all about your fine ass, you got this… and then I went to open the sliding glass door. It stuck so I looked down to see if it was locked. And when I looked down I realized Emily had nodded off. Literally. Her head was rolled over to the side and my boob was just there, staring out my shirt, like a cyclops. The poor guy was staring in to my eyes because I was standing two stairs up from him, my nipple staring him in the face!! He was just trying not to look down!

I met him, the adorable Cable Guy, months later. At Hooters appropriately enough. Yup, he didn’t remember my face. I said “Maybe I should whip my boob out to remind you of who I am?” He replies, “Did you work here? ohh… no, you’re the boob lady with the baby.”

9 Comments

Posted in Attachment Parenting, Parenting

Tagged Breastfeeding, Hooters

Great big happy

Posted on March 10, 2011 | 3 comments

I am happy. For a lot of reasons, but mostly for a few very small ones.

I pulled in to the driveway this morning on my way back from the gym and a smile spread across my face. That kind of smile you can’t possibly contain. All because I saw Mike’s car. I walked inside and told him that while I was aware that one day he’d get a new car, the idea of it kind of makes me sad. Something about seeing his big old grandfather car… it makes me smile. Deep inside. That kind of smile you get when you see the boy you like. Or that your favorite dessert is the dessert special at the restaurant where you decided to have dinner. That kind of smile that makes you feel like you are the Winner. I walked inside to see my sweet little lady, all dressed, hair brushed, matching headband and all. “I’m awake, Mike just got up,” she reported. I looked past her to the kitchen and saw Mike all sleepyfaced in his pajama pants. I tried to tell him about that smile, the smile that was so big. “I spent so many evenings sitting on my front porch, pretending I wasn’t waiting to see if you’d stop by, and you always came… you always did. And as soon as I’d see your car…” I think I trailed off there, my face buried in his shoulder, as if he couldn’t hear the sappy HolyShitWeAre GettingMarriedinLessThanTwoMonthsAndIAmSoExcited tears in my voice.

I usually jump right in the shower in the morning when I get home. I lingered in the kitchen. We laughed a lot this morning. About SALAD. Because we love to say SALAD! We tried to tell Em for the zillionth time that she was doomed to be a “crazy person,” too, one day. Her words for when she is less than amused with our antics. She cut us off. With a wave of her hand and an”I’ve heard this all before” face. We laughed some more.

It’s raining today. Not a reason to be happy by most folk’s standards. But not everyone has these ass-kicking rain boots, either.

I took my time this morning. I stopped to laugh in the kitchen. I stole a real, grown-up kiss from MQD before the interloper barged in to the bathroom. I helped Em pick out her job at school today, and she showed me a picture she had made. I walked through three puddles on my way in to the office. I chased Fisher down the driveway at work. I took my time. And I was at my desk only eight minutes later than average.

3 Comments

Posted in Family, Nonsense, Wedding Planning

Tagged Happy, Rain boots, Salad

Day 77: Design your own logo!

Posted on March 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

Day 77: Design your own logo!

I am not certain I could get away with calling it as logo, but have spent a fair amount of time in the last week manipulating an image in an effort to create a cohesive look between various parts of our wedding nonsense. Not too long after we got engaged Mike and I worked up a design for a tattoo to celebrate our engagement. We are both really happy with the way it turned out. I still feel like mine is “new.” It has been cold and given its location it has not really seen much daylight. The actual tattoos might not have seen a lot of daylight, but I have seen an awful lot of the image in the last week.

After a little digital manipulating we turned our tattoos…
into both a design to use as the watermark for our invitations and a design for use on our wedding favors. What the design will be placed on shall remain a secret for now! In an effort not to spoil the surprise, this is all you get for now, the basis of our “Wedding Logo.”

Day 76: Shoes!!

Posted on February 26, 2011 | 2 comments

Day 76: Wear shoes that are one size too small, then you will experience huge relief when you come home and take them off!

This wasn’t a tough challenge for me. In the very beginning of my journey through the book I revealed my tiny little shoe problem. I have tons of shoes I rarely wear anymore. Some because I don’t really have a need for my Frankenstein-esque clodhopppers and some because I can’t squeeze my 10.5 size feet in to my size 10 shoes. But since I have been squeezing my ass in to jeans I never thought would fit again recently I figured, hell, why not? Maybe my shoes will fit again, too.

No dice. These were none too comfortable, and will surely feel fabulous to take off this evening. As you can see the entire subject exhausts Fisher.