Tag Archives: Snoopy

Bed Buddies

Posted on April 10, 2012 | 4 comments

I am a snuggler.  My big girl is a bed hog and my husband likes his space.  My dog will gladly let me sleep all wrapped up in him but he sheds like… well, a dog and he does not always smell fabulous.  For the better part of the last thirty-five years I have fallen asleep with my Snoopy in my arms.

My little girl is currently taking the place of my Snoopy.

20120409-121323.jpgCo-sleeping is an integral part of my parenting philosophy. It is also an excellent way to go to bed at 8:15 for the first year of your child’s life. I rock in my chair and hold my sweet girl and eventually I say that I am going to “put her to bed.” Those unaccustomed to my techniques might wrongfully assume that I will come back out of my bedroom at some point. It’s not likely. Snuggled with my girl, lights out, pajamas on… no promise of a glass of wine, a movie, an adult conversation can keep my eyes open long. And even if I can stay awake until she is peacefully slumbering there is always the risk that she will wake and I’ll be gone. And then we will have to start all over with our bedtime song and dance.

I don’t know how many times I have written of my love for Snoopy. I love him. I do. And last night I loved him even more.  It seems I can sneak out of bed if Snoopy hops in my place, nestled against Lucy he keeps her warm and smells like Mom.

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Posted in Attachment Parenting, Parenting

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I’m a sucker for a guy with a red nose….

Posted on December 23, 2011 | 2 comments

When I was a little girl Rudolph hung over the fireplace.  In my memory he looks just as he does above.  A sockmonkey sock transformed by my mother in to the “most famous reindeer of all.”

Christmas decorations were stored under the stairs in the basement.  In the twenty plus years my family lived in my childhood home the basement saw a fair amount of water and mildew as basements are inclined to do.  The dozen roses my dad gave me on my 16th birthday eventually got wet.  The 45s I had saved along with my Fisher Price record player succumbed to the moisture.   More than a few stuffed animals met their demise.  Shoe boxes of notes passed in middle and high school gave way to the wet environment.  (I can think of a few of you who might be glad to know that.)

Call it a Christmas Miracle if you like… But Rudolph survived.  He looks as young and vibrant hanging on the wall in my living room today as he ever did when I was a kid.  Don’t tell Snoopy, but if something ever happened to Snoop… Rudolph and those eyelashes could win me over in a hearbeat.

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Posted in Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

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The Flag

Posted on December 12, 2011 | 5 comments

For the most part I embrace the woman in me that grew out of the Brownie I was as a little girl.  I make crafts with my kid and give them as gifts unabashedly.

Over the last few years I became a seasonal door decoration person.  A part of me blames motherhood.  Another part of me blames MQD and his desire to cover the window in our front door with something to prevent our neighbors from peeking in.   It doesn’t matter how it happened.

It started with a Christmas wreath.  And then I had this cute wreath with Easter Eggs on it.  I have a patriotic themed “Welcome” wreath for mid-summer and the 4th of July.  Autumnal leaves for the fall.

But I have a line I won’t cross.  Or at least I thought I did.

The American flag went up for Veteran’s Day.  And it stayed up.  It makes me happy.  And admittedly, aesthetically, it looks pretty cute with the pansies and the front porch and the holy-shit-all-we-need-is-a-white-picket-fence-I-have-never-been-so-happy vibe I have going.

I don’t remember what exactly prompted it.  But when MQD suggested we could get all kinds of flags, for the seasons and the holidays I let fly a string of obscenities that would have made a sailor blush.  Evidently homemade crafts as gifts are acceptable.  Door wreaths are acceptable.  Seasonal flags are not.

I was in Michael’s.  I had a basket full of stocking stuffers.

I was feeling full on Mom mode and chatting with an elderly woman behind me.  The line was long.

And then it happened.

At first I just took a picture.

And then I started needing permission.  I all but begged MQD to tell me to buy it.

He didn’t make it easy on me.  Neither did the woman working the register.

Quietly I asked her “Umm… that Snoopy flag, where are they in the store, I umm… didn’t see them anywhere.”

She pointed.  I ran past the twenty people behind me in line to look for it while she rang up my other items.  I started feeling a little like a contestant in that game show where the harried housewife runs through the grocery store aisles all wild-eyed and crazy.  I didn’t see one.  They had reindeer.  And Santa.  And snowmen.  No Peanuts.

I returned to her register and asked one of those questions I already knew the answer to.  “Is it a huge pain in the ass to ask you to get that down for me?” and I pointed twenty feet up in the air to the lone Peanuts flag.  Wordlessly she left her register.

And now I have a Snoopy flag.  But just this one.  So help me.

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Posted in Family, Parenting

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Snoop

Posted on December 11, 2011 | 4 comments

Once I set my mind to something I am committed.  Whether it is my favorite article of clothing (overalls,) my favorite food (cheese) or my favorite man (Snoopy) there is no changing my mind.

I got my first pair of overalls sometime in preschool.  I can remember ordering bowls of grated cheese as my meal at Anita’s Mexican restaurant as a little kid.

And Snoopy and I have been in love for as long as I can recall.

I left my first Snoopy in the Smithsonian Museum cafeteria circa 1981 and my mom promptly replaced him.  The “new” Snoopy was de-stuffed and washed multiple times before he was satisfactory. There is a certain neck flop that I demand from my Snoopy.  She very kindly obliged.

By the time I went away to college there was no questioning whether or not Snoopy would be tagging along.  At that point Snoopy 2.0 was coming up on 15 years of age.  He’d had a near total removal of his neck over the years, sewing up one hole at a time.  Until his head sits right atop his body.  But the crucial parts are still in full effect.

I started sleeping on my side when I was 8 or 9.  A broken arm introduced me to the joy of side sleeping with a pillow.  What began as a propped up cast developed in to a life long love of side sleeping and spooning a spare pillow. And my Snoopy.  The right side of his face is softer than the left.  His right ear even softer than that.  Years and years of my thumb smoothing his hair down has made his ear in to a Snoopy shaped worry stone.

I didn’t set out to do it.  When we decorated our bedroom.  It was my first adult bedroom with all new furniture and bedding, chosen by myself and my husband. Thirty four years old.  I got MQD a wedding picture on canvas for above our bed.  We opted to keep things very clean and simple.  Black.  And White.  And Grey.  He’s not crazy about the throw pillow I picked out for the center of our bed.

But who am I kidding?  It’s Snoopy that sits center stage.  He’s coming up on 31 years of service, I think.  He can sit wherever he wants.

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Posted in Family, Parenting

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Day by day, letting go… Day 72

Posted on February 15, 2011 | 8 comments

Day 72: Today is Closure Day.  The book suggests you call up your kindergarten and tell them you have left your favorite toy there, and that you need it for your psychological health.  I sleep with a Snoopy I have had since 1979.  I most certainly did not leave anything behind in my kindergarten classroom.   It’s not my style.  I don’t really do Closure.  Or Letting Go.  I leave the door open.  I hold on.  It’s my nature.

The idea of just “letting go” is foreign to me.  I am the girl that saves everything.  Everything.  Exhibit A.  My mother made my dad get rid of this nasty blue bathrobe when I was eight or nine.  And I loved it.  So I saved it and wore it for another year or so… Eventually it was in pieces, and it had to be thrown out.  And I saved the belt.

(Strange side note, there was a short-lived sitcom Day By Day on circa 1988, I loved that show and the teenage son always wore a blue bathrobe. He was so cute, I just knew he’d love me! And then later he played Greg in all the Very Brady movies…)

Exhibit B.  Deeper in my trunk I find this little gem.  From an old friend on a visit home from California.  This is a pretty fair indication of what 1998 looked like.

I still keep a lot of things, but when I moved out of the house at the beach I learned that stuff was just “stuff.”  The memories I have of the people that have touched my life are no more or less real by virtue of my having a shoebox full of cocktail napkins and movie tickets.  That having been said, I was gifted recently a box of knick-knacks and items I had left behind.  I was grateful that Jer had saved them all these years.

In that box was  Exhibit C.  Folger Shakespeare Library’s production of Taming of the Shrew, circa 1991, they handed out these buttons.  This one makes me the happiest.  Unlike Lucentio, I still “burn” and occasionally “pine,” but I no longer feel as though I will “perish”  without these objects of my desire.

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Posted in This Book Will Change Your Life

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