Tag Archives: Life

Keep it simple, stupid.

Posted on February 28, 2013 | 6 comments

I have a knack for making things more difficult than they need to be.  I imagine conversations that will probably never take place.  When I drive I am thinking about what I will say when I arrive if I am late (even though I will be toting along the finest excuse for running late there ever was, a 20 pound machine that ejects bodily fluids at random intervals.) When I nurse my baby in public I prepare clever responses to judgey looks, even though I am one of few women that has actually never been on the receiving end of one.

Lately, as I keep putting one foot in front of the other aimlessly, I am mentally preparing some kind of justification.  Lucy is 13 months old.  Emily would rather be with her pals than with me after school.  But what I am doing here, at home, is important.  It is maybe even more special to me to be home with the girls now as they get older than it was in the early days.  And I like being available to volunteer at school.  I have the time to shop sales for the things we need.  And we save a lot of money on groceries with me being home, cooking every day. And and and … I could go on. But no one ever asks me “So, when are you going back to work? Why are you still home?’

Probably more important than the nameless, faceless strangers that I imagine asking me that question is that my husband, the one person who has an opinion that counts, he isn’t pushing me.  I shot him a line the other day “Don’t forget I have that committee meeting tonight.”  It was his second day at his brand new job.  And I was nagging him about when he would be home.  His reply was short and sweet.  But it has eclipsed all of the imaginary nay-sayers in my mind.  “No problem.  I am glad you’re doing these things.”

I don’t know what I am going to do in the next few years.  I am still running in place.  Two miles today.  And a 1600 yard swim.  I’m not even all that anxious about the fact that I don’t know where I am going.  Because when I get to the finish line MQD will be there.

I can’t see the path but the finish line is crystal clear.   With tears in my eyes I’ll say “I did it!” and with his signature smirk, that one that drives me nuts in every sense of the word he’ll say “Of course, you did.”

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20130228-134803.jpgToday’s challenge – Invent a new way to peel a potato.  I am a red bliss potato, leave the skins on kind of girl.  But when I have to peel them I have a gadget, of course.  I am a lover of the kitchen gadget.  This obsession is fed  by my mother-in-law, another lover of the kitchen gadget.  A peeler that slips over your finger.  And like all great deals in the kitchen store, you can’t just have one, you need two.  One of them is serrated, for my serrated peeling needs.

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Last night I peeled potatoes.  (And then I spent quite some time trying to take a picture of mashed potatoes that looked appetizing.) I didn’t invent a new way.  But I didn’t use my kitchen gadget, either.  I just grabbed a paring knife and peeled those bad boys.  You know, it was really simple.  Making things more complicated than necessary might be one of those things I used to do when I was young if I keep this up.  I could get used to it.

So, day 91 – I am not going to reinvent potato peeling, motherhood or marriage.  I am just going to keep doing what I am doing.  Because it’s working.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Exercise, Family, Parenting, This Book Will Change Your Life

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Transition

Posted on February 24, 2013 | 22 comments

20130223-233341.jpgThe final stage of active labor is transition. It is the most painful. I wept and moaned and cried during labor. But during transition? In transition I got quiet. I was scared. Scared and excited about what was surely going to happen next.

Transition is hard. Even when I am not preparing my body to deliver a baby I have been known to get quiet as I move my mind and body in to a new stage of life.

I have been quiet. And reflective. I think I am in transition.

I have been reading about the idea that we all reinvent ourselves every seven years. According to a lot of medical research all of the cells in your body are replaced every seven years. Granted, you do not wake up to a brand new body overnight. One cell at a time your body rejuvenates itself. And who I am today may actually be a different physical person than I was seven years ago. It stands to reason that I would feel different emotionally, spiritually.

Seven years ago I felt it happening. I was a new mother. My marriage was dissolving. I didn’t know what my future would look like but I could see small stretches of the path to get there. There were tears and glasses of wine and friendships forged and promises made. I moved my body hundreds of miles from my home. I got a new job. I made new friends. The change was slow and painful. I fought against it even though I knew my smile would be brighter when it was over. I held on to bitter moments because I thought they defined me. And perhaps because I wasn’t sure who I was going to be if I let them go.

It’s happening again. The quiet. The quiet that precipitates evolution.

Change is hard when you aren’t running from anything.

And so I run in place. Or around and around my neighborhood. But I still don’t know where I am going.

I have been home with the kids for a year. I don’t want to leave them.

I have been married for three years in April. I am still over the moon for my man.

I am putting down roots in my community. I don’t want to move.

I have been writing here for almost four years. I don’t want to stop.

I have a dozen drafts in my files. Half-written essays abut the girls and motherhood and fitness and my velour sweatsuits. But none of it speaks to me. If it doesn’t hold my attention it won’t hold yours.

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Change is paralyzing. Odd that growth makes me feel so frozen solid. As my mind races and my cells replace themselves I can’t seem to make a complete thought.

My big girl is reading chapter books and Tiger Beat magazine and painting her nails with her friends. My baby girl is eating a sandwich and chasing the dog in a itty bitty track suit. They are growing so fast. Days are moving so quickly and I can’t hold on tight enough. I am running short on the time needed to sit at the keyboard and write it all down. As soon as I sit down to finish a thought I no longer really feel that way anymore.

My girls are growing fast all of a sudden. And so am I.

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I don’t know what will become of my girls. But I know that no matter who they turn out to be they will be fine. Because they are loved. And I know that someday we will look back at pictures of their childhood and laugh and say “Of course! They couldn’t have become anyone else!”

And I know that days, weeks, months from now – when my transition is over – I will laugh and say “Of course, this is the path I have always been on.” But today? Today I am not really sure where I am going. But I know I will be fine. Because I am loved.

22 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Family, Nonsense, Parenting

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Toe Socks, that’s what’s up.

Posted on February 9, 2013 | 13 comments

I am a complex gal.  I am a problem solver.  I am a compulsive oversharer.  And I might be a genius.

I told you that I sweat, right?  And I admitted that I love Zumba.  Have I told you that I have a creaky mess of a body?  Zumba has presented a problem.  My poor knees are not down with the twisting and grooving required by my newly discovered total lack of skills in the latin dance arena. Clever girl that I am, I have determined that my Vibram Five Fingers fix this problem.  My incessant wearing of this wildly flattering footwear has left me with almost zero tread. The smooth surface lets me twist my hips like only this dance challenged totally sober Saturday morning girl can.

Last Saturday I wore my Vibrams to Zumba only to discover that my feet sweat an outrageous amount while I am there.  Slipping and sliding in my Vibrams left my feet hurting.  Knees were better, feet were killing me.  Socks, folks.  I can’t stand them.  But I will wear them when I get my sweat on.  Off I went in search of athletic toe socks.  Sexy, just you wait.

I stopped in two different running stores locally  with no luck.  By then my sidekicks were out of patience.  Not to be discouraged, I kept thinking on this situation.

Did you know that my foot, not including my toes is exactly the same size as Emily’s? You see where this is going, right? I am a genius, guys.

This is what it looks like when you cut five tiny holes in a dirty pair of your kid’s socks.

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Not too dissimilar to that cotton wrist condom they put on your arm before you get a cast, no? It’s such a hot look I am considering wearing them all of the time.  With flip flops they would be especially smashing.

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I told my feet they did not have to hide in the shadows.  But they are shy.  Some part of me has to be.  My ass was practically begging for me to include a picture last week.  Sheesh.

In an effort to stop this trend of “what’s grosser than gross” that seems to be developing I think I will be returning to This Book Will Change Your Life this coming week.  Hold on to your hats, folks.   Maybe this book will change your life, too.

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Posted in Nonsense

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Inside a Paper Bag

Posted on February 5, 2013 | 26 comments

photo (4)As a teenager I looked through the big box of family photographs often.  Pictures from the late 1970s were in albums.  They had rounded corners and a vintage feel.  As time went by the pictures never made it in to an album.  They were in Kodak envelopes, labelled “Rehoboth Beach, 1982.”

Whether the pictures were in books or sorted in to piles there was one thing in common year after year.  There were pictures of us sleeping, a tiny Kelly with a  Snoopy in a rainbow bedroom, my brother in his Smurf sweatsuit curled up in my dad’s chair.  As a teenager I didn’t understand why there were so many of these pictures.  We were just sleeping.

My dad used to joke us when we were little,  “You’re good kids, when you’re asleep.”  As a parent I can certainly agree.  There is little more wonderful than a sleeping child, the frenetic energy of the afternoon exchanged for the slow and steady breath of night.

I spent a lot of time the last few days sitting on the edge of my bed just watching them – my girls, snuggled up asleep.  We’ve had five days of Ladies’ Nights.  We have had quick dinners and eaten dessert on a blanket in the living room.  We watched Footloose and Project Runway and we painted our nails.  These little sleeping beauties, they are my good kids – “when [they’re] asleep.”

I look at them and I wonder if they will have a childhood like I did.  They will ride their bikes, they will play in the creek.  They will have birthday parties in our back yard. We will have pizza at the pool.  I will take pictures of them while they sleep.  It will be the same.

They won’t have a TV Guide to circle their Saturday morning cartoon choices.  They won’t tie an index card with their name and address to a balloon and set it free, hoping against hope for a reply in the mail some day.  They will not likely ever have a teacher that calls their handouts “dittos.”    And unless I print some of these images their teenage selves might not roll their eyes at the numerous pictures of them sleeping.  Many things will be different.

When I was a little girl and I was waiting for the bus to come in the morning I would watch the sky. There is a moment when the sky goes from pink to tan right before the sun comes up, right before the school bus comes. I used to pretend that my whole neighborhood was inside a paper shopping bag.  This morning while Emily was putting her shoes on and Lucy was still asleep I stepped outside on to the deck and looked at the sky.  There was a paper bag all around me.

The sky turned from tan to sunlit before Em finished tying her shoes.  I need to remember to show my girls the paper bag that surrounds us.  I need to do it quickly while they still remember what a paper shopping bag looks like.  A few more years from now you might not ever see one at the store.  The only paper bag left will be the one that surrounds my neighborhood early in the morning.  Their childhood is different.  But it is the same.

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Posted in Family, Parenting

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“Can’t have one without the other…”

Posted on February 1, 2013 | 21 comments

I put my whole self out there. Sometimes.  The things that I keep to myself are not usually the things that I decide are too ugly or too embarrassing.  I have a tendency to keep inside the things that I suspect no one really wants to read about.

No one wants to hear about how head over heels in love I am.  Do you?  If your answer is “no,” go ahead and roll out. That’s all I have got today.  And a whole two weeks before Valentine’s Day, huh?

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Pic from an 80’s party the first week we met. I still look at him like he is the only boy in the room.

MQD is gone for a few days.  And I miss him.  I miss him super bad.  I am trying not to dwell and mope around like a lovesick fool but it feels like the boy I like at school is out sick and I wasted a really good outfit, an outfit so good that I can’t just wear it again next week because people will remember.

It was just a week ago that I started getting up out of bed at night when Lucy was asleep.  I poke my head out of the bedroom and look for him, for this man to whom I am married and it makes me nervous.  Because I am excited to see him.  Because I have missed him in the last year.  Because he is pretty much the best.

There are a lot of things that I don’t have figured out. But I think I might have this Marriage business in the bag.   In the last week I had a slow dance in the kitchen, I fell on the floor laughing, I felt beautiful, I was challenged, I got laid,  I got to sleep in, I was proud, I was encouraged and I was loved.

And now I miss him.  I miss him, like whoa. You can’t blame me, really, can you?

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As an aside – to the well-meaning security-minded folks:

I am probably not supposed to shout out to the Internet that the husband is out of town.  But I probably shouldn’t have scheduled a Freecycle person to swing by and pick up some kefir grains when MQD was gone and we were home alone either.  As I was pacing back and forth trying to decide if I should even open the door a lovely woman was leaving me a potted daffodil and a handwritten thank you note as she picked up the kefir grains I had left in a jar on my porch.

So, I am going to assume that if you plan to hunt me down while MQD is gone it is going to be to offer to drag my trash can to the end of the driveway.  Or tell me that my dinner was great.  Or follow behind me putting my carkeys on the hook or calling my phone that I have misplaced.  Because even people that live in the computer are mostly kind. And I am really needing someone to do those things for the next couple of days.  

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Posted in Family, Nonsense

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Sweat & Smoke

Posted on January 30, 2013 | 34 comments

Sweat“Have you been swimming?”
It’s an innocent enough question. In defense of the woman that asked me, I was standing in front of the locker room, the locker room that connects to the pool at the gym.

“Umm.  No.  I just sweat like a beast.”

I am really good at making casual conversations come to an awkward finish. I tried to rescue the conversation, I did.  To be honest, my sweating isn’t something that even embarrasses me.  I will never be accused of just posturing at the gym.  I look like I have been working out and working out hard just a few minutes after I step on to a treadmill.  Sadly, the same holds true when I step out of an air-conditioned car bound for an outdoor wedding in August.

I know I left you hanging this weekend.  Did I go to Zumba?  Did I “join the party?” Am I still there?

I went.  I sweat.  I will go back.  I actually snorted and laughed loud enough to attract the attention of a friend the first time there was any shaking of the ta-tas. I cannot see a woman shake her shoulders and not hear Penny from Dirty Dancing shouting “God wouldn’t have given you maracas if He didn’t want you to shake ’em!”

I didn’t love it enough to turn my back on running and the dreaded elliptical machine.  I have finally admitted to myself that I can not run every day of the week.  If I do not take a break I hurt myself.  I just do.  I was not built to be a runner.  I am… top heavy.  I am not light on my feet.  I read Born to Run.  I watch Danny Dreyer’s Chi Running videos, I visualize.  And I run, every other day.  In between I do whatever I can to keep the mojo and keep moving because one day off becomes three becomes a week becomes a month.  So, I will run. And on my off days perhaps I will Zumba.  I laughed.  And I sweat.

I sweat.  Because it feels good.  Because it clears my head.

sweatBecause it makes me feel like I am taking time for me and that I am important.  I feel healthy.  I make better choices, choices about what I eat, what I do.

But not all of those choices are easy.

There is a man at the gym. He is an older fella, in his grey  sneakers and his dress pants.  He wears a plaid shirt and he keeps it neatly tucked in.  He walks on a treadmill and he gabs with everyone.  He is friendly but if you point at your earbuds and smile he doesn’t chat you up anymore.  He is pleasant.  But that is not my favorite thing about him.

He reeks.  And not because he sweats.  He reeks of cigarettes.  Reeks.  I pass him on the stairs sometimes and I wonder if I smell like smoke when I walk past someone later.  It doesn’t just hang on him, it follows him like Pigpen’s swirl of dust and dirt.

And I love it.  I love the smell of smoke.

Not all of the time.  When I am with my kids at a park and I smell smoke I whip my head around and give the stink-eye to the teenagers that are sitting on a picnic table.  When I am in line at the grocery store and I can smell the checker, they have just come back from a smoke break, I don’t breathe deeply.  It doesn’t smell good.  It is out of place.

But at the gym, during my hour, the hour that Kelly is just Kelly not Mom, I’ll be damned if that cigarette does not smell delicious.  Running alongside him today at the gym I got to giggling.  Ludacris was singing in my ear “I wanna, li-li-li-lick you from your head to your toes” and I imagined myself letting those words escape my mouth.

kellyI am not a Smoker.  Not anymore.  But I am not a Non-Smoker, either.  I prefer to think of myself as a non-practicing Smoker.

I would spend some more time trying to reconcile this, my desire to be healthy and fit combined with my love of the smell of a Marlboro, but it isn’t new.  Ten years ago I celebrated my 26th birthday with friends.  We were talking about our newfound love of Les Mills’ Body Pump.  I had a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other.

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These days I don’t have a cigarette in my hand.  And I still love the gym. Some things change and some things stay the same.

I still wear overalls more often than I should.  But I don’t perm my hair anymore.  I am going to put fitness, quitting smoking and not perming my hair in the “Good Things I Need to Keep Doing” column. Sniffing old dudes that reek of smoke at the gym – I am putting that in the “Quite Possibly Creepy But It Won’t Kill Me” column. Feel free to debate me on this.

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Posted in Exercise, Parenting

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I gotta be cleeeean!!

Posted on January 7, 2013 | 7 comments

I have jars all over my kitchen with gross stuff in them.  Three jars of kefir right now are growing on top of my fridge.  Two large jars of kombucha scobys are sleeping peacefully in my cabinets.  I like the process of watching something sort of disgusting become something else sort of disgusting.  If that something disgusting means that something good is happening, too, even better. If that something good is even possibly contributing to the health of my family in a positive way than I enjoy it even more.

Oddly, I can not muster up any excitement while watching the snot roll out of Lucy’s face.  I can’t feel awe for the gloopy crust that accumulates in her eyes by morning.  I know that it is her little body pushing out the funk.  Intellectually, I know this.  Maternally, I just want it to stop.

We aren’t sleeping.  Instead we are sitting up in bed at night trying to keep the snot from sitting in her chest.  We are running the humidifier and using saline spray.  I am shooting breast milk up her nose and in her eyes.  I am pushing rest and fluids.

And we are showering.  Like as a hobby.

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Lucy used to be really jazzed in the shower. She loved it. It’s losing the appeal now that we are in there all of the time.  Now I have to spit water at her to get a smile.

In this morning’s shower I had to resort to wowing her with my lyrical stylings. To the tune of Suzanne Vega’s “Left of Center” I sang to her this little number –

If you want me, you can find me, With my baby in the shower!! No more crying, no more whining,We’ve been giving Snot too much POWER!

It’s a first draft.  And I am running on empty.  Stick around for more nudity and a snazzy rendition of Sammy Davis, Jr’s “I’ve Gotta Be Me!”

Whether it’s a cold, or even the flu! Makes no difference to me, the end result is the same, I gotta be clean, I’ve gotta be cleeeean!!!

 

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Posted in Nonsense, Parenting

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Remember that New Year’s Eve we all puked?

Posted on January 2, 2013 | 16 comments

IMG_9216I used to wear leather pants on New Year’s Eve. I curled my hair. I wore excessive amounts of black eyeliner and a WonderBra.

I have always liked New Year’s Eve. Even as a bartender I didn’t mind it. New Year’s Eve brings out the amateurs and typically working cut in to my party time but I never minded.

I liked the Get Fancy and Kiss a Boy aspect of the celebration.

A lot has changed in the past few years. But much has stayed the same.

This year I was not wearing leather pants. But I was wearing my fancy lounge pants, the linen ones. I was not wearing a WonderBra. But I did sport a clean “sleeping bra” (the most excellent option for keeping boobs up out of your waistband but nowhere near your neck.) I did not curl my hair or put on loads of makeup but I showered and I was wearing lipgloss. I was going to kiss my favorite boy.

We had considered having dinner across the street but Lucy had been under the weather. We opted to have dinner at home. Em would join our neighbors for dinner and a sleepover and MQD and I would have a quiet evening at home. I ran out to Trader Joe’s for wine and MQD grabbed sushi from our favorite place. It was all systems go for a good time.

We had dinner. I finished preparations for our New Year’s Day Brunch. I made three dozen ham biscuits and enough mac and cheese to sink a ship. A lemon pound cake waited on the counter. The heartburn inducing Chicken and Bleu Cheese Frank’s Red Hot dip was in the crock pot. When our neighbors invited us across the street for a drink it seemed like a great idea. Lucy was chipper and not particularly nose-runny.

Sinking in to their couch I was laughing that it was only nine o’clock and I was fading. I would give Emily one more kiss goodnight and MQD and I would head back across the street with Lucy and hopefully make it until midnight. I bent down to kiss her forehead and I thought she was hiding, goofing off the way kids do. I pulled back her blanket and she was hot. There are five words I did not expect in a million years to hear. “I want to go home.”

Across the street we went, Mom with her baby and half a bottle of wine, Dad with the big girl wrapped in her blanket. Em is not a party animal. My girl likes her sleep. When we got home I was not convinced that she wasn’t just desperate to sleep in her own bed. Ten minutes later when she filled half of a small trash can with puke I knew she wasn’t messing around.

Moms have skills. They can change gears rapidly. I was in Possibly Sexy Time Date Night mode only twenty minutes earlier and now I was spreading towels over every surface of my house. Operation Don’t Get Puke on the Carpet or the Couch was in full effect.

By 11 o’clock my New Year’s celebration was looking much different than I had imagined it. Emily had gone to bed (a bed covered in towels) and my boys were asleep on the couch. IMG_0137

Lucy was out cold on the floor.

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I snapped these two pictures and sent them to a friend with comments about what a wild night we were having at out house.

And I sat back down in my chair. I was preparing to watch the ball drop all by my lonesome. It was 11:35. I heard Emily upstairs. She was awake. She was getting sick again. I needed to run upstairs and check on her but I couldn’t move. “Miiiike, wake up, Em is sick and…. SOOOOO AM I!!!”

Not since my days of frequenting fraternity parties have I seen someone go from having a great time to puking their guts out in a split second. It was crazy. One minute I was hanging out with my bad self, flipping channels and trying to figure out why I still love Jenny McCarthy. (It has been 18 years since MTV’s fantastic dating show Singled Out and I still love her.) The next minute I was sweating and shivering and puking my guts out.

At 11:54 I was in my bed in my bathrobe yelling to the living room “Is Emily ok?” I was going to just close my eyes for a minute and then I would hop out of bed and wish my sweet family a Happy New Year.

That’s not exactly how it went.

I passed Emily in the kitchen at around 3:30. She was dumping out her own barf bucket. I was weirdly proud of her. We sat on the couch together like you did in college after an ugly bender. We sipped water and told horror stories. “Oh man, were you awake when I barfed in the shower. That was crazy” and “do I smell like puke or do I just have puke in my nose so everything stinks?”

By morning we were certain we would live. MQD went out for Gatorade. We cancelled our brunch.

IMG_9231It has been two days. MQD eventually fell prey to the Nuclear Crud. He is camped out in our bedroom. I washed and folded the 800 towels we puked on. Lucy has been enjoying her new found freedom gained by the fact that no one is really paying attention to watch she is doing. She is playing in a pile of torn up magazines. Em is behind the couch watching a movie on the iPad. There is some superior parenting going on in this house.

So, yeah. As soon as we feel better I guess we will start eating ham biscuits and spicy bleu cheese chicken dip. Shit. I might have just puked in my mouth a little.

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Dear Universe, You can suck it. Love, Kelly

Posted on December 30, 2012 | 15 comments

I don’t remember getting an email notification that the Universe started following my blog.  But that is the only possible explanation.  Because it happens without fail.  I say it out loud, that everything is peachy, and then Blamm-o I get knocked on my ass.  I wrote last night that all was well.  The girls were sick but on the mend. I had felt crummy briefly but I was on the up and up.  And then I went to bed.

I was in tears about fifteen minutes after I woke up.  Nothing and everything was bothering me.  The long and short of it – I have been slacking on the exercise this month and it makes me mental.  I need it.  On top of that Lucy is nearly a year old and I might be ready for a night out.  And by ready I mean I will likely cry and come home early and worry and obsess and call home a hundred times but if I don’t go soon it could get even uglier.  Oh, and I am so tired, so very tired.  Now you are all caught up.

The Universe saw me send up the “Life is Super, thanks for asking!” flare and so it kicked me in the stomach as soon as I woke up.  In my bed with swollen eyes I said “No, I don’t want coffee, I just need ten minutes to myself.” I flopped back in my bed for a bit and then I hopped in the shower to shake it off.

Shower.  Clean clothes.  Polka dot knee socks and boots.  Eyeliner and lipgloss that  tastes like peppermint bark.  I was calm and cool.  I was approaching collected.  But only approaching.  We would take two cars to church.  I wasn’t ready to go exactly and the pressure of everyone waiting on me was too much. “Just go, I will meet you there.” I might have yelled.  I don’t remember.  I know I was angsty by the time I got in the car.

20121230-174957.jpgAnd, well, by the time I was calling AAA to get my car out of the ditch (the ditch I have not backed my car in to since January 4th, 2012, thankyouverymuch) I was beyond angsty and full blown crying again.

Fuck it, Universe.  You win.

I gave up.  I took a pillow from the bed and made a spot on the couch.  Lucy and I were going down for the count.  I needed a nap.  Not an in the chair cat nap and not a full blown fake sick and stay in the bedroom nap, but a bed pillow on the couch nap.

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I am afraid to say that my nap fixed everything.  But things have started to turn around.

MQD made a pile of things for the thrift store. It was in the corner of our bedroom.  (Since this girl’s husband was very tolerant of her big, fat whiney freakout this morning I will not make any comment about how long it might have stayed there had I not put it in a bag.)  When the chips are down I clean. I put the duvet cover in the washing machine and stripped the sheets.  When you sleep with a dog and a baby a totally clean bed deserves a totally clean bedroom so you can slip between your cold sheets and feel like you are in a hotel once a week.  So, the sheets were nearly done, I had to get rid of the pile of stuff.

In the pile was a pair of Levi’s.  I don’t know why I dropped my pajama pants to the floor.  But I did.  And on they went.  “Good butt or bad butt,” I asked.  MQD deferred to Emily.  Em said she liked them.  So did MQD.  “They are yours,” I said.

“Mine? They are too small.  We used to be the same size,” he said.

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Well, not really.  I used to pour myself in to his pants.  It was a squeeze.  My 25-year-old boyfriend was a lot smaller than me but I tried not to let it  bother me. How could it?  I was 33 and I had a 25-year-old boyfriend.

Just when I though that the Universe hated me it threw me a bone.  A bone in the form of a pair of Levi’s.

Universe, you tried to fuck with me today but it seems like you changed your mind.  The good news is that my ass might have been bigger than my 25-year-old boyfriend’s but it is smaller than my 29-year-old husband’s.  So, take that, Universe.

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I just parked my ass in my chair with a big, fat glass of pinot noir.  I snapped a quick picture but it didn’t really show my feeling of ahhh.  So, I took another one. Universe, I am going to drink a glass of wine and go to bed. And when I wake up in my clean sheets there will still be vacuum marks on my rug.  And as long as I can still button my husband’s jeans I will not be in tears before breakfast.  Nope.  I sure won’t.

Tomorrow is the last day of 2012. I was awake more this calendar year than any other.  2012, I put my car in the ditch four days in.  And I put my car in the ditch again just two days before you were over.  But all in all, when I wasn’t in the ditch, it was unfuckingbelievable.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Nonsense, Parenting

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Do you believe in Magic?

Posted on December 21, 2012 | 13 comments

We had tickets for the 7 o’clock train at the museum.  Through the woods we would ride, woods filled with magical twinkling lights.   We would drink hot cocoa and use candy canes as swizzle sticks. We would make a Christmas ornament while we waited.  We were going to see Santa.

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Emily was rolling her eyes and giving me attitude.  Lucy was screaming bloody murder because she was going to be forced to wear a hat.  Dad was grumbling and trying to get us out the door.  I was stifling the desire to shout out “Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas” every few minutes.  It was pouring down rain.

Dad and Lucy

But at least we would get a picture with Santa. Right? Through the lens of the camera we woud forget all about the rolled eyes and the tears.  Baby’s First Christmas would be perfect.

The trainWe were boarding the train when the Conductor said “Santa is on the right, m’aam” and he winked.  Oh.  Okay.  I’ll put Emily on the right side of our bench seat so that she would get a better look.

When we rounded the corner and I saw Santa standing near his sleigh with an oversized elf and an umbrella I realized we weren’t getting off of the train.  Santa would stop at each bench and ask each child a thing or two, they would chat.  “Is there anything special you’d like this year? How about something for your little sister? I’ll see you next year, dear!”

There would be no picture.

The Mom in me started to panic. Well, I will take the kids to the mall.  Tomorrow.  I’d get a picture.  It will be fine.  I frantically tried to snap family pictures with my phone in the dark.  With flash.  Without flash.  It didn’t seem to matter.  We were blurry.  There would be no picture with Santa.

And then I saw him.  He had ornate brocade around his coat.  His beard was soft and long.  His glasses were bifocals. I don’t think he had his suit stuffed with a pillow. I couldn’t tell if his boots were real or those pleather boot shaped shoe coverings popular with mall Santas.    I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to look him over carefully for an hour as we waited in line.  He was there right next to us for a moment. And then he was gone.  “Well, hello, there,” he said.  “Merry Christmas.”

He talked to the kids for a minute and then he moved to the next row.  True to form, I was misty eyed.  Ever my mini-me Emily looked to me and said “This might be my first Christmas crying when I see Santa!” I laughed and decided not to tell her right then that it most certainly was not.

As the train pulled away from Santa and headed through the tunnel we were all smiles.  The tunnel shone, the christmas lights that adorned the train reflecting on the tunnel’s interior.  We looped back around and drove by Santa once more on our way back to the station.  The children waved and I reached for my phone.  Maybe I could get a picture of just Santa.  That would suffice.

Santa

 

I showed the picture to MQD as soon as I snapped it.  I was laughing.  “It’s the best picture of the night!” he said.  And in unison we both shouted “He’s like Bigfoot!”

I love our blurry picture of Santa.  I love that we did not get a posed picture at the mall.  I love that Em can’t scrutinize the picture later, examining the image, searching for any indication that maybe it wasn’t really Santa after all.

Because for one more year, at least one, my big girl believes in Magic.  I hope you all have a groovy holiday.

 

Do you believe in magic in a young girl’s heart
How the music can free her, whenever it starts
And it’s magic, if the music is groovy
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie
I’ll tell you about the magic, and it’ll free your soul
But it’s like trying to tell a stranger ’bout rock and roll… ~ The Lovin’ Spoonful

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