My baby girl

They grow up to damn fast.

Tom says it's true.

Tommy is grabbing his crotch while playing.
Me: Go potty if you have to.
Tommy: I don't have to.
Me: Then why are you grabbing your weiner?
Tommy: Sometimes a weiner needs a hug.

I'm okay, just boring

I haven't blogged in a long time, I know. And it's not deliberate; I just haven't had anything blog-worthy to talk about. Like has been plugging along, with a few notable milestones but not many. Tommy started kindergarten, Ryan has a date to homecoming this year (pix to come), we are almost done moving, and I took my position as VP of the school music boosters organization.  But I haven't really felt like writing anything, which is odd since I was inspired to blog about wanting a new laundry hamper. I'm weird that way. I'm not even making the kids' Halloween costumes this year.  But I am alive, and all is well. Maybe I'll run around the house and take pictures for y'all.

because undies on the floor are just tacky

You know what I want for Xmas this year? A dark brown wicker (real or faux) laundry hamper for my bedroom. It seems so stupid, and it's only $30 at Walmart, but it's exactly the kind of thing I won't buy myself. Because it is purely a luxury. It'll look nice, but a laundry basket, or cardboard box, or laundry pile on the floor will work just as well.  I'd like a dark brown wicker hamper, but I don't need one. And thirty bucks for a glorified laundry basket is a lot to pay for something you can't even justify for yourself. But I'd like to have it, and if it goes on sale I may buy it. But, man, would it be cool if my family bought it for me.

When do I cut my losses.

I bought a hammock and stand online, on a sale site, for $150. That's a good buy for a hammock and the stand. But then when it came, it was just the hammock. No stand.  And of course the order confirmation is long gone. So then I was on a different sale site and found a hammock stand for $60.  So I swallowed my miserly nature and bought it. Ryan spend half an hour in the back yard putting it together and then when she was finished she climbed in for a nice rest. And her ass hit the ground. So now I have over $200 sunk into this thing and I think I need a hammock pad for it, too. Is it even worth it anymore?

mmmmm. bitter grape juice

Tom: Whatcha doing?
Me: Buying wine online.
Tom: Why?
Me: I got a coupon from Cabela's. They want me to join a wine of the month club.
Tom: Uhhh, no.
Me: You can't tell me if *I* can buy wine!
Tom: Are you going to start drinking wine?
Me: Well, no.
Tom: Then why do you need it?
Me: I told you! Cabella's sent me a coupon! I'm saving money!

37

I started this blog seven years ago, in part to deal with the trauma of turning 30. Yesterday I turned 37 and I realized that a lot has changed since then. My mother's death is what finally made me feel like an adult. My hair is grayer, my face is starting to show wrinkles, I think my paunchy mama-belly is permanent, and I'm okay with all of it. I have no idea how big my fortieth birthday meltdown will be, but for now thirty seven feels right. Also, Tom bought me a black pearl necklace to go with my ring and two pieces of fenton hobnail glass "from the kids".

And I think it really says something about the effectiveness of my meds that I had a really great birthday yesterday, even though five hours of it was spent driving home from Omaha in a van with broken air conditioning.

The Orkin man now knows too much.

Tom: (in a big booming voice from upstairs) Charlie!
Me: What!
Tom: Come here!
Me: (as I stand up and start going upstairs) You know, when you yell for me like that, you kind of sound like my father yelling for me. It's very confusing sexually.
Tom: (by now right in front of me, shaking his head) I have the Orkin man on the phone. He wants to know when a good appointment time is.
Me: Oh.

This is generally how businesses get to know me as a client, actually.

I must have married for looks.

over the phone:
Tom: So then I'll just buy this carpet remnant.
Me: Won't it get wet on the way home?
Tom: Nah. It's not raining.
Me: But it's rain-y. And the sky is dark here in town.
Tom: It'll be fine. Don't worry.
.....fifteen minutes later....
Tom: Is it raining in town?
Me: It doesn't really look like it. Why?
Tom: Cars have their wipers on. Oh crap, I just drove into the rain! The carpet is getting wet!

How tragic that NO ONE could have predicted this.

Why DON'T yellow cats poop?

A conversation between brothers, standing over the sandbox.

Tommy: Uh oh. It was open over night.
Danny: I think cats pooped in it.
Tommy: I don't see any poop.
Danny: But there are paw prints in the sand.
Tommy: Yeah, but I think it was a yellow cat. And yellow cats don't poop.
Danny: Oh. Okay. (and then he climbed in the sandbox.)

Because they both have to do with imaginary men who watch you in your house.

The other day I bought three things for the new house. I purchased two mezuzahs and a What the shit?! wall graphic.  Here are my issues with these purchases. Completely unpredictable and in no way asinine issues. A) I can't read Hebrew so I don't know which way to hang my mezuzahs. And B) I'm not sure where to put my creepy stalker man graphic to ensure that it gets noticed but it's not in your face that it's completely lame. 

Why does spellcheck flag mezuzah? I think it may be anti-semitic.

It's a tiny pill. Easy to misplace. In my throat.

You know that feeling when you take your pills for the night but you're nowhere near being tired so you grab a Xanax, and then twenty minutes later you realize that you're still keyed up and you can't remember if you actually took the Xanax or not, so you start searching your kitchen trying to think of where you could have set the pill down because you have kids and pets and Xanax would be bad for either of them so you're tearing the place apart even though it's really hard to do because you're exhausted and that's when you realize that you did, in fact, swallow the Xanax?  No? Just me? Hmm.

I just want a monkey butler. Why is that too much to ask for?

I've found a monkey table I want. But it's $180.00, which is a lot of money to spend on a table that will drive Tom nuts and possibly scare the children.  Also, it comes pre-named, and for $180.00 I think I should get the right to name my own monkey table. I certainly wouldn't name it Winston, that's for sure. I think I'd name it Zac Efron. Zac Efron the monkey butler. I like it.

here kitty kitty kitty

1. I know for an absolute fact that Tom would not want me to get a new cat.
2. I know that Tom likes cats anyway.
3. I texted Tom to mention that I wanted to get a new cat.
4. Tom did not answer, thus squandering his chance to voice any opposition to a new cat.
5. Should I go get a new cat?

Conversation between me and Tom

Me: Hey I was reading in AARP magazine how you should invest in forever stamps to save money when the price goes up.

Tom: (distracted) Yeah.

Me: Which is why 200 stamps are coming in the mail. I'm offsetting the one cent price hike projected to come next year with a $1.72 shipping fee. Ironic that they charge to mail you stamps, isn't it.

Tom: (groan)

Me: Why do you always look like you have a headache when I tell you what I've done? You should come home every day and ask me how my day has been so that these things don't blindside you.

Tom: (incredulous look)

Me: For instance, the hammock in the hallway? That was an awesome deal! A hundred and twenty five dollars for a two hundred and fifty dollar hammock. And I know that was the original price because it was written right there next to the sale price. I didn't even have to price compare.

Tom: Mmm hmm.

Me: And did you know that right now we have 3 bath mats coming? Memory foam, Tom! They'll remember our feet! How could you not want that kind of service from your bath mat?

Tom: This is why I look like I have a headache when you tell me what you've done.

I hate platitudes

Pet peeve of the day: people who say happiness is a choice and then talk about endorphins. Either you believe that chemicals can determine mood or you don't, but if you do then give me the most basic level of respect and let me take the meds required for me to choose happiness. For some people jogging is enough, but for others, "Choose happy" needs a little help.

My Barbie Dream House

We're trying to buy a house. A larger house for our family, but a smaller place for us. Make no sense? Well here's the deal. The house is bigger, with a family room downstairs and an extra bedroom to be a toy room. But the master bedroom is much smaller than what we have now. And the master bath, ugh! They took about 2 feet off the end of the bedroom and built a shower stall on one end of it and a 4 or 5 foot closet on the other end.  In that closet they put a toilet facing a sink with a door in between. So when you go poo, you step out and bang your shin on the dresser. When you shower, you step out naked into the bedroom. And between the shower and the pee closet is a giant mirror and vanity just open to the room. We have to wall all that in at some point.  Also, the kitchen is smaller than our current one, but there's a dining room so it sort of evens out. Less cupboard space, a very small single sink so I don't know how we'll wash the pots too big for the dishwasher, and the fridge sticks weirdly far out into the kitchen. But it'll work better for our family and that trumps personal space. Ooh, and it's by the woods! Last night I bought a hammock online! A hammock! With which to flip my kids on the ground. Yay! And trees to walk around between and try to climb and fall out of. Lots of little boy things for my little boys. And Ryan loves to draw trees and can take long walks in the woods with her sketch pad. All around a good thing. So wish us luck on this house thing. The home inspection is in 4 days so if it's all going to fall apart, that'll be when.

Trapeze or clown car?

Years ago I worked at a convenience store and there was a lovely customer who came in every night with her teenage son to get a cup of coffee for her and a doughnut for him (free doughnut with coffee). I don't know why they were out every night at the same time, but they'd stop by and over the years we'd make idle chit chat. She had a very heavy accent (some sort of Hispanic accent) but we'd talk a little. Her older son had left with the circus right after high school. When I commented that I didn't think people really did that she looked confused. A lot of his friends had joined the circus after school because it paid so well and they gave you a place to live and you could travel. I agreed with her and every once in a while she'd come in happy because her older son had called her, or sent her a post card.

One night the teenage son came in alone to get the coffee and doughnut. When I asked him where his mom was he replied, "She's in the car with my brother. He's home for the weekend." "Oh, was he nearby?" I hadn't heard of any circuses in the area but I could have missed a poster or radio ad.  But nope, the brother had flown in with some of his friends. "Friends from the circus?" The kid looked confused. "Noooooo. No circus friends. Why?" "Because your brother's in the circus." Wow, what a clueless kid! Then he started laughing at me! His brother was'nt in the circus; he was in the Army. He'd left home to join the service, and no one but me had misunderstood before. He and his mother laughed about that for weeks.

Everyone wants to be an astronaut; it's so overdone!

My mom took me to a child psychologist when I was 4 because my (childless) aunt thought I was too moody. Maybe I was, or maybe she knew nothing about little kids and I was just prone to crying fits. Either way, Mom took me to the shrink.  I went for a month or so until the guy wanted to meet my dad and my dad gave the whole "I aint goin to see no damn shrink and the kid don't need one either. She just needs to get her ass spanked when she won't quit bawlin," speech and then the bill came and dad saw it and we never went back.

I don't remember anything about the shrink except his name (Dr Houk, which I always thought was dumb because somehow I decided it was Hawk and he was just saying it wrong) and that his office was in a town an hour away and had a deli right by it. And every time we went my mom would take me to the deli if I behaved and talked to the guy. I loved that deli! I loved the high stools at the counter and the bagel and cream cheese she bought me. I felt so sophisticated and metropolitan. I felt Jewish.

See, when I was little all I wanted to be when I grew up was a New York Jew. Brick buildings with doormen, bright yellow taxi cabs, delicatessens, Yiddish in everyday conversation, cocktail parties. I wanted all of it! Apparently at some point I'd seen Annie Hall ( my parents never waited until bed to watch TV) and been profoundly influenced by it, which is probably the least damaging Woody Allen movie for a very young child to be profoundly influenced by. Which is why I loved the idea of being in therapy and of eating at a big city delicatessen. A bagel with just a shmear of cream cheese, please.  I didn't even know what Jewish meant; I thought it meant grown-up, or interesting. I was a preschooler and all I wanted to be was Woody Allen. Not Diane Keaton. Woody Allen. Which is actually a pretty great considering that by third grade I wanted to be a hooker.

Yep, a hooker, because all I knew about sex was that it was a beautiful thing for two people to do together and all I knew about hookers (did my parents never censor what they watched with the kids in the room?) was that they got paid to have sex. Seemed like a win-win to me at the time. Plus, hookers get to stay up all night!  When I found out it was illegal to be a hooker, I switched my career goals to private detective, because I liked Scooby Doo. I wanted to be Shaggy because he got to eat cake all the time and hang out with the cool talking dog. Fred and Daphne never actually did much, Velma couldn't ever keep her damn glasses on her face so she struck me as pretty useless, and so I picked Shaggy. That's right. My lofty childhood ambitions were to be Woody Allen, a hooker, and a half beatnik-half hippy who ate dog treats in exchange for going into the dark, monster-filled basement first.

Take that, ballerinas and firemen! My career day drawings were way more interesting (and disturbing during the hooker phase) than yours were.

For bolting Grandma to the table, of course

I just google imaged this. It's not my actual photo.

My mother had whole brain radiation when she first got sick. They mold a mesh mask to your head and bolt it to the table with you in it, to make sure you absolutely cannot move while they shoot laser beams into your brain. After the treatment was done, she let me have the mask, which I have on my wall as art, and which is the only way I can see or touch the curves on my mother's face.  But this story is not about my mother's death, or about the mask on my wall. This story is about the pins they use to hold those masks to the table. See them up there in that picture- the white plastic Ts? They came with the mask but I didn't need them so I set them on some table or something and they ended up on the floor and amongst the boys' toys and got thrown out one at a time for a couple weeks.

One day, a couple days after I'd gotten the mask from my mom, Ryan walked up to me and asked, with a curious yet deeply disturbed look on her face, just what that thing on the floor was. 

"Oh, that? It's for bolting your grandmother to a table. Why?"  

Then I had to explain the radiation to her and how it was done. And with a relieved look on her face, my 13 year old daughter said to me, "Oh thank god! I thought you'd lost your IUD."

Oh for fuck's sake, he's only four!

Me: Every toy you throw I will throw away. If you throw it, I will put it in the garbage!
10 seconds later
Tommy: (whispering) Don't throw it, Danny. Just drop it.
sound of toy hitting the floor
Tommy: Mo-om! Danny throwed it!

 

How the hell did my senior year start 20 years ago?

Somebody on my facebook feed posted this link: it's a list of 29 albums that are now 20 years old.  Some of them I've never heard of, some of them I seem to remember coming out later than 1993 (probably the single I remember was released later), and some of them are pure nostalgia. 1993, now 20 years ago, was the year I moved out of my mom's and in with my dad. It was the year I went to a new school, the year I learned to play pool, the first year I had no curfew. 
I'd like to explain 1993 to Ryan. I think she would have liked it had she seen it. Had it not ended 2 months before I met her original father. But how to explain such a foreign concept? Libraries without computers, scrambling for coins for the pay phone, learning of new songs from the radio and then recording them onto cassette tapes. My old notes from class, the kind we wrote, not the kind we took down, almost looked like the iphone text messages. I wrote in blue pen and my handwriting and then my friend would write in green pen with her handwriting. Not a whale shaped little thought bubble but as close as our primitive cave painting allowed.
I miss those days. I miss the 90s the way my mother must have missed the 70s. I wonder if everyone gets nostalgic for their senior year and the decade it inhabited. If you do, tell me in the comments.

Introducing Ron Weasley

We got rid of our box turtle on Xmas day. My brother in law had a friend who wanted one for his son and our boys were too rough to really play with it here, so we gave it to the guy for his kid. We also found an inside home on a farm for our outside dog, Cheyenne. It was sad, but she needed a place with more attention and a house big enough for her. So, to dull the pain of loss a little bit, we got a new cat.  And by "we", I mean I brought it in the house when Tom wasn't looking. So now we have the 2 cats, our old ocicat Tat and our new black cat Ron Weasley. Mom's chihuahuas don't get along so well with the cats. Pupper doesn't care about them but Tripper barks at them constantly, not out of anger or hostility but because he wants them to play with him. They don't know this, however, so they hiss and their tails get bushy and they run into the basement.
At night, due to house training issues, the dogs are crated and the cats have the run of the house. I usually wake up at least twice in the night because Ron Weasley is trying to sleep on my face and purring at top volume.. Tat generally stays on the bed a few inches away from my head. I like cats more than dogs, I think. They use a litter box, which is a big selling point.

It's like capitalism, but I'd do it wrong

I wish I could afford to rent a store. I want to open a store and sell cocoa and free books. I want to open a free book store with no goal of making money. And I want to sell cocoa at cost. And maybe wine on weekends, if it weren't for the damn insurance you have to get to serve alcohol. But I think a free book store is an awesome idea. Bring in your old books and take new books, and sit in comfy chairs and read them. No even exchange needed, no requirement that you bring in anything in order to take out anything. Just a place to duck in, have a cup of cocoa (I'll make it from scratch), and pick up some used books for free.