Ramblings and Reflections

Forwarding address

2010-01-19T09:13:00.001-05:00

If you are looking for me, click here.

Remember when...

2009-05-23T20:16:00.001-04:00

...I used to blog?

Marriage is grand

2008-09-30T21:37:00.003-04:00

"So, let me see," said Hubby.

See what?

"Your tooth."

What do you mean?

"Didn't you go to the dentist?"

Yes.

"Well, let's see it," he said, leaning in close.

Okay. Cheese!

"Oh WOW!"

What wow?

"You can really tell."

Tell what?

"You can really tell the difference!"

What? It looked bad before?

"Well, it was kind of gray..."

What?!?

"Isn't that why you had it fixed??"

Yes, but I didn't even know it was gray. The dentist told me it was gray. You could tell it was gray??

"Uh, yeah. It's your front tooth."

Why didn't you tell me?

"I thought you knew."

How would I know?

"Oh, Honey....I love you."

Ugh.

"Gray tooth and all."

Hip to be square

2008-08-30T15:10:00.004-04:00

I love music. I love to listen to music. I love to play the guitar. I love to sing. I tinker with the piano. I occasionally pick up the drumsticks and can beat a simple rhythm. But put me on a dance floor and the best moves you will see will be my retreat to my seat.

I just can't dance.

My not-dancing is not the kind of not-dancing made famous by Elaine Bennes on Seinfeld. Although I don't have much more rhythm than Elaine, I do have the sense to keep my inabilities to myself. So when I found myself at a Huey Lewis and the News concert with Hubby and another couple earlier this week, I assumed the not-dancing position: hands in pockets and feet planted firmly on the floor, shoulder distance apart. Once in a while, my parts typically do an involuntary swaying to the sounds of the band, but as soon as I realize it, I realize it's not actually the band I'm watching. It's some other band in some other land, where the beat is irregular and the dancers are dorks.

I'm not really bothered by this handicap. In fact, if I didn't have dancing friends, I'd almost never think about it at all. But when they get the itch to go out and dance (which, thankfully, our status as mothers of small children generally prohibits), it really gets uncomfortable. Again, I'm not bothered by my inability to cut the rug. It's my friends who have the problem. It's my friends who insist that I MUST come and dance, even though I'd rather stick needles in my eyes. It's my friends who, for some reason, think that I secretly want to dance, and that they are doing me a favor.

While off-beating to the beat of the Power of Love, I couldn't help but look around at the other concert-goers. What a spectacle. Directly in front of me was a man with an exceedingly large head. Even bigger than my head. I'm thinking big heads prohibit good dancing, because he was just standing there, blocking my view. The girl to his left was doing some kind of pony-riding 80s technique that wasn't all that attractive, but she was keeping time with the music. Four chairs to the right was a girl dressed in black who is clearly the queen of her dancing friends. I am such a non-dancer that I don't even possess the vocabulary words to sufficiently describe the skillful coordination of her moves. Suffice it to say that she can dance. Over yonder, on the other side of the rotating round stage was a woman who is clearly a big fan of Huey. Very big. She was dancing like no one was watching. The man gyrating in the middle of the aisle next to her was dancing like everyone was watching, and he knew it.

As I quietly swayed to the Heart of Rock and Roll, I looked over at my friend who stood beside her husband, hands in her pockets and feet planted firmly on the floor, and I realized that there is a place at this concert for dancers and non-dancers alike. I'm just glad I went with a friend who dances as well as I do.

Help wanted

2008-08-16T07:50:00.001-04:00

Cake decorators wanted. No skills required.

Synchronized blushing

2008-08-12T08:33:00.001-04:00

It's not the actual diving that is keeping me out of the Olympics. I can dive. And I'll bet I could even synchronize it if I tried. It's not the towering height from which they leap in perfect unison toward their medals that scares me either.

Nope. It's the suit.

To the untrained eye, the suits appear to be structurally identical. The colors vary, but the square yards (feet) of fabric employed to maintain a modicum of modesty are minimal at best.

Covering just enough of, er, well, you know, the derriére, these suits would make me break out in hives. Just short of a thong, the dive competition uniform is revealing, but surprisingly stable. Rather than fight the swimsuit wedgie, the Olympians seem to have instead embraced it. And there is no wedgie worse than the swimsuit wedgie.

Time to grow up

2008-08-07T20:53:00.001-04:00

I was one of those kids who grew up before their time. I used to think it was the circumstances of my life; my parents split up when I was very young, I went to three different elementary schools, my mother remarried and had a new baby when I was 12. All of that seemed to carve my destiny in stone, a destiny of marked independence and maturity.

Now that I have children of my own, I'm not so convinced that it was the circumstances of my life that made me old beyond my years. I think I was just born that way, something I have learned from my oldest daughter who is very much like me in that regard.

Regardless, for whatever reason, I was never really all that kiddish when I was a kid. And yet, I've been waiting to feel like a grown-up. I'm not sure what I thought it would feel like to be a grown-up, but this was definitely not it.

Over the past few years, I have lost two very important people in my life, and I am poised to lose a third very soon. With each loss, there is a sadness that lingers, an empty place that can never be filled. Maybe that empty place is where the last of childhood disappears, because, suddenly, I feel very much grown up.

It wasn't turning 40 that aged me so much as it was the realization that life is temporary. I know it sounds cliché, but it's a cliché we all have to embrace at some point. Intellectually, I know that we all die at some point. But dealing with the death of a parent or a grandparent has nothing to do with intellect and everything to do with emotion. Very grown-up emotion.

How stupid do they think I am?

2008-06-02T20:23:00.004-04:00

You know, I get a fair amount of Nigerian con-artists with dead husbands or mothers with terminal illness, begging me to somehow help them retrieve their money from some place or other in exchange for a sizable chunk of the fictitious pot of cash, but this one takes the cake.

My Dearest.
My name is Mr Marc Lawrence, I
am the Eastern region branch Manager
of the Lloyds TSB, of London United
Kingdom.
(sounds impressive so far... hardly noticed all of the punctuation errors...)
I do not want problems (uh-oh) but I just
hope you can assist me. I write
you this letter in good faith.I am in
control of the sum of 30,000,000
(Thirty Million British Pounds sterling
which was an excess of profit
made by our region branch office in
the last quarter of the year
2003,which I have carefully placed in
an Escrow Call Deposit Account in
our Bank under the name of Adam smith
(that's smith with a lowercase "s")
and did not declare this to my
head office,
(gasp! you want me to help you steal??)
Can I really trust you to
hold this money for me until I
arrive your country and pick it up
myself and you deduct 30% of the
total money as your commission?
(Yeah, sure buddy, you can trust me...heh...heh...heh...)
All I need is for you to get me a good
current account in your bank where I
can move this money into.
(Sure, no problem. How's about I throw in a blank check as a gesture of good faith?)
l will need the following information from you.
1) Your Full Name:------------------------- -------
2)Occupation:----------------- --------------------
3) Your Address:---------------------- -------------
4) Your Telephone Number:-----------------------
5) Your Fax Number:----------------------- --------
6) Your Mobile Number:----------------------- -----
7) The Name of the Closest Airport to your:------
8)City of Residence:-------------------- ---------------------
9)Account to received the money:---------------
(Who would seriously give this info?)
10:International Passport:.....................

There is practically no risk involved; (hardly any) it will be simple Bank- to-Bank
transfer.
I hope you understand my situation.Take my word.Thank you and God bless.
(Let's leave God out of this, okay?)

Regard,
Marc Lawrence
Branch Manager
Lloyds TSB

(I am so calling Lloyd....)

The greatest gift

2008-05-28T06:53:00.002-04:00

Click.

I just want some sensible brown shoes. Is that too much to ask?

2008-02-27T20:05:00.003-05:00

They should not sparkle. They should not flash. They should not require any balancing skills beyond what is required to stand on two feet. They should be comfortable. They should be just stylish enough to excuse me from mockery, but not so stylish that I need to reevaluate my wardrobe. I'm too old for the young shoes, too young for the old shoes, too tired of sneakers.

My quest for footwear, I realized this afternoon, has been a struggle for as long as I can remember. Being something of a big goon, I have always been larger than the average bear, a fact that trickles down to my not-so-small feet. At 5 feet 9 inches tall, I am entitled to have appropriately large feet, which my pair are. If I wore a size 6, I would fall right over. That's not the point. The point is, what looks good on display in a size 6 or a size 7 never translates well into a size 10 or 11.

Did you notice the jump from 10 to 11? Yes, well that's another whole issue. There is no 10 and a half. There is a half for all other sizes. Not 10. Apparently, once you pass 10, fit is no longer important in the minds of shoe manufacturers. Shuffle around in an 11 and be quiet. That's what they say.

I'm sure if I think hard enough, I can make my quest for comfortable, conservative shoes into a metaphor for my life. I never sparkle. I'm never flashy. I try to keep two feet firmly planted on the ground, even when reaching for the stars. I've never been too concerned with fashion, or with fitting in. Well, maybe fitting in just enough to be comfortable. And I'm never quite the right size, no matter what size I am.

I just want some sensible brown shoes. Maybe a second pair in black.

Hello out there!

2008-02-11T16:39:00.000-05:00

When you ask me to take pictures of a farmhouse, this is what happens.

Remember that list?

2008-02-10T09:10:00.000-05:00

A list of 40 things seemed overwhelming. So, instead, I made a list of one. One thing that would make my life better. And then I did it.

Go see.

Who is this Gloria Steinem anyhow?

2008-02-06T09:34:00.001-05:00

These kids today....

Gloria Steinem is scheduled to speak this week at the University of Massachusetts. A local reporter polled UMass students to gauge their awareness.

My name isn't Earl

2008-01-25T09:22:00.000-05:00

Just to be clear, my last post was not a pitch for pity. Nor was I clamoring for compliments. Given the recent shift in my life, it seems somehow appropriate to come here and sort things through. As I mentioned earlier, I do spend a fair amount of time analyzing myself, but I don't always talk about it. Writing has always been a good way to make sense of my thoughts. Writing it here forces me to keep it rational.

And, it forces me to at least consider the opinions (i.e. blog comments) of others.

(Chicago? Did someone say Chicago??)

Find a cause. Do 40 good things. Hmm. Interesting. Maybe I could combine these two ideas ala "My Name is Earl" and make a list. I could carry it around in my pocket with a red flair pen (did you see The Bucket List?) and cross things off as I go.

How good do these things have to be? Are we talking bake cookies for the kids good? Or travel to Africa to fight AIDS good? Eat more vegetables good? Or grow a garden of vegetables for the poor good? Are these things to be random acts of kindness, or premeditated goodness?

I hear a list coming.

Detour

2008-01-22T16:02:00.000-05:00

Anyone who knows me knows that, while I do spend a fair amount of time rambling and reflecting on the minutiae of life, I spend even more time wondering how I ended up in this mess, whatever my current mess happens to be.

Lately, that's been a full time job.

Before you cry "false advertising" and slam the door on your way out, let me say that the unwritten policy of my blog to not bitch and moan about my life was just that. Unwritten. Rather than continue to ignore my need to write because of some silly promise I didn't actually make, I'm taking a blogging detour.

You are welcome to join me as you see fit.

This year, I'm turning 40. (I'm not sure why I just blurted that out, but sometimes writing follows a stream of consciousness, so let's just see where this goes.) I am the mother of three children. Hubby and I have been together for nearly 20 years, with a couple of breaks before our marriage almost 12 years ago. We have a beautiful house in the suburbs. We are the proud owners of the best dog ever. And I have what I once would have considered my "dream job" as a writer—and now I'm a photographer to boot.

Yet, I find myself in a seemingly perpetual state of funk.

There is nothing overtly wrong with my life. I have good friends and a fairly close, albeit extremely dysfunctional family.

But there is a lack. A lack I cannot define. A feeling of incompleteness that always nags at me. From the outside, I appear to have it all together, I am told. But from the inside, not so much.

The recent loss of my OtherFather threw me into a tailspin, one that was overshadowed by the busyness of the holidays. Now that January is in full swing, the weight of that loss is heavy. I miss him profoundly, but I am also haunted by the events leading up to his death. Like a movie on a continuous loop, the whole experience replays over and over in my head, from the fall to the torture of watching one of the most important people in my world slowly slip away over the course of 46 hours, and finally take his last breath.

The aforementioned lack was present prior to my OtherFather's death. It just wasn't so loud. There is something about tragedy that makes people re-examine their lives. It makes us wonder if we are living life to the fullest, if we are going to look back at the end of our lives with pride or with regret.

When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a psychologist, a pharmacist, a world-class volleyball player, a best-selling author, or an executive in a huge company. Not all at once, mind you.

Today, as the suburban wife and mother of three—a job considered by many to be the world's most important—I wonder if I am doing enough, if I am enough, if what I do has enough positive impact on the world, or at least my world.

Maybe that feeling of lack is ambition in disguise. Maybe that feeling of lack is dreams abandoned. Maybe it's grief. Maybe it's seasonal affective disorder. Maybe it's perfectly normal or maybe even a mid-life crisis.

Whatever it is, it stinks.

Ice breaker

2007-12-13T09:39:00.001-05:00

I'm back.

And I have things to say.

Things about shopping.

Things about Christmas trees.

Things about customer service and the cost of gifting and searching for that perfect something or other.

But also, things about how difficult Christmastime is when we have suffered such a tremendous loss in our family.

Rather than jump into all of those important things, instead, I offer you this:

It is truly amazing how much better a hairdryer works when you clean out the lint trap.

The nightmare begins

2007-11-18T22:42:00.001-05:00

They took my OtherFather out through the bulkhead door, his head secured in place with padded braces, his arms strapped at his sides.

I stood at the top of the stairs with my hands in my pockets, staring at the blood-stained cellar floor. It was all too much to take in, too much to comprehend, too much to feel. My mother was scurrying about, looking for her handbag and a jacket. I was drawn outside by the lights of the ambulance in the driveway.

The emergency medical technicians were hard at work, doing what they do, and doing it behind the closed ambulance door. From the front of the ambulance, I could see my OtherFather lying on the stretcher. His right hand was visibly trembling. A police officer appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and told me that, considering the circumstances, he didn't appear to be in bad shape.

I went back into the house and sat at the kitchen table with my mother, listening to her recount the details of what had happened. None of it made any sense. Why would he walk through the cellar door into blackness? The bathroom door opens in. The cellar door opens out. It was the middle of the night. Where was he going?

Tumors in the brain can have a profound effect on a cancer patient. My OtherFather's tumors were impacting his speech, his balance, and his ability to concentrate. He was moving more slowly and becoming increasingly more disoriented. Trying to make sense of what had happened was impossible, because things didn't always make sense in his head.

We gave the ambulance a head start, knowing it would take a little while to get my OtherFather admitted into the emergency room. As my mother got ready to go, I stood at the top of the cellar stairs again, imagining what it must have felt like to fall into darkness.

It's a nightmare I have had many times, but I always wake up.

Unexpected tragedy

2007-11-11T23:43:00.000-05:00

The phone never rings at 3 a.m. with good news, so when that electronic bell jolted me out of a deep sleep a week ago, my waking words were, "Oh my god."

Two years and three months ago, my OtherFather was diagnosed with colon cancer. Surgery removed the tumor and nine surrounding lymph nodes, all of which came back clean and cancer free. The healing was long and arduous, complicated by an infection. Months later, he looked like his old self again, a self he would continue to resemble until last summer.

The signs were so subtle we didn't notice them until after we knew something was wrong. Forgotten words, a dip in energy, and a vague feeling that something was off teased the minds of everyone in the family, but never matured into full-blown concern until that fateful day in August.

My OtherFather loved to work out. He loved to go to the gym. He loved to swim. When he was done, he loved to sit in the steam room and catch up with his friends. One morning in early August, he sat, like so many other mornings, engaged in conversation, when he was suddenly unable to speak. More concerned about the embarrassment than the potential causes, my OtherFather drove himself home. His speech returned, but he wondered if he'd had a mild stroke.

A little while later, I stood in the hallway at the emergency room with my mother as technicians wheeled in a large x-ray machine. They had already done a CT scan, and as they took pictures of his torso, I couldn't help but wonder if they were looking for cancer. They ruled out a stroke.

The cancer was back, and it was in his brain.

Over the next two months, there would be several trips to Boston, radiation, hair loss, fatigue, nausea, depression, discomfort, pain, and a growing fear that the end was near. The neuro-oncologist said it could be six months to a year, but nobody knows for sure.

When the cancer appeared in my OtherFather's lungs, any remaining glimmer of hope was squashed. New symptoms raised suspicion that there could be other areas of the body being invaded with metastatic tumors. We met with doctors in the palliative care clinic, where they prescribed medication to treat nausea and fatigue. Last Monday, we had a follow-up appointment. We didn't make it.

The phone never rings at 3 a.m. with good news, so when that electronic bell jolted me out of a deep sleep a week ago, my waking words were, "Oh my god."

The voice on the other end was frantic. As I drove across town, my heart pounded in my ears. The ambulance was already in the driveway. My mother was on the phone, calling my sister. My OtherFather was at the bottom of the cellar stairs, with three emergency medical technicians securing him to a board.

In the middle of the night, he had walked through the cellar door into blackness.

Hazardous duty

2007-10-18T21:15:00.000-04:00

As an interesting aside to my regular duties at work, I had the assignment yesterday of attending a discussion group about land use and sprawl and smart growth. My job was to record the meeting and transcribe the highlights from the all-day affair, which I did using an iTalk microphone attached to my iPod. I spent much of my day today reliving the meeting, taking copious notes from the audio recording, and, can I just say, OUCH!!!

Those blasted "ear buds" that come with the iPod are awful! Which I already knew, but seldom do I actually listen to my iPod with headphones. (I prefer the iGiantSpeakerThing.) I do believe I have sprained my tragus.

You waited two weeks for a post, and this is what you get. Whining about ear pain. Next, fallen arches...

One step closer

2007-10-02T20:28:00.000-04:00

I did it. I sent it. I mailed it. The manuscript. The book. The children's book.

I committed to sending my book out to a publisher for consideration by October 1. Check.

The Mom Song Sung to William Tell Overture

2007-10-02T11:11:00.001-04:00

Whether you are a mother or you simply have a mother, this is a hoot.

An update on updates

2007-09-26T12:15:00.000-04:00

(If you are among those bored to tears by tales of weight-loss, turn away from your screen for a minute whilst I update those who care.)

After a long hard summer of cookouts, ice cream runs, and cocktails on the veranda*, I am happy to report that Mrs. Pal, Mrs. Friend, and I have maintained our weight throughout the season. With nearly the exact same weights as we weighed on June 12, we have proven that we can, indeed, maintain our current status without sacrificing too much fun and enjoyment. Speaking without authorization for all of us, I can honestly say we have not counted points, we have nearly abandoned our weigh-ins, and we almost never talk about dieting anymore.

The bad news is, two of us are not really there yet.

Mrs. Pal has, in my opinion, reached her ideal weight. She may argue there is another five pounds to go, but that's just a chick thing. We all say that so we don't sound too vain. Mrs. Friend and I have made respectable progress, but we have agreed (we DID agree, didn't we, Mrs. F?) to renew our commitment. I'm not sure either of us have attached hard fast numbers to our goals, but we both know we're not quite there yet.

Today is Wednesday, our official weigh-in day, and our current status has been posted to your left.

(If you were turning away, you may now turn back.)

*I so never have cocktails on anyone's veranda.

For those of you still playing along....

2007-09-20T22:04:00.001-04:00

The theory is, whatever that fourth grade voice in your head says when you are the last man (kid) standing is thematic in your life. It's what you say to yourself when things aren't going as planned.

When I was standing there, begging to be chosen, my fourth grade voice was telling me that I am not good enough, and that nobody likes me. Insecure much? Not me. At least I didn't think so.

The leader of the discussion group suggested not that we walk around reciting the fourth grade mantra, but that whatever that mantra is shapes the decisions we make.

To put it into context, we were discussing one aspect of our lives we would like to change or improve. For me, it was career related. Although I love my job, there is a part of me that has always wanted to write a book. Only I haven't. Not exactly, anyway.

I wrote a children's book a few years ago, but at the time, it was more of a story than a book. It's about 600 words in length, and it is written for early elementary school children. I recently rediscovered this story and realized that it's actually pretty good. I started tossing around the idea of getting it published—something I know absolutely nothing about.

Then came the mantra.

What if it's not good enough? What if nobody likes my story? I never asked myself these questions directly, but they are the blocks in my way.

So my story remains hidden in the hard drive of my MacBook, wrapped up in self-doubt. The leader of the group was quite pushy, demanding to know what I was going to do to create a new possibility for my life, to make this story become a book. I committed to sending my book out to a publisher for consideration by October 1. This year.

So what's your mantra? And how does it shape the choices you make?

What would you say to yourself?

2007-09-07T16:27:00.001-04:00

It's time for everybody's favorite game! Interactive Blogging!

Here's how it works—I'm going to describe a scene to you. You take time to reflect. Go check your email, update your Flickr photos, grab a Diet Coke, whatever. Then come back and post your response in the comments. Those responses may or may not be rolled into Round Two of Interactive Blogging!, depending on the enthusiasm of the studio audience.

Work with me people. Work with me.

You are in fourth grade. It's recess time. A game of kickball is assembling on the field. The teachers rally all the kids together and choose two captains. One by one, the two captains fill their teams with players, one on Pat's team, one on Chris's team, one on Pat's team, one on Chris's team, until there is only one person left to be chosen.

And it's you.

What is the fourth grade voice saying in your head?

?

I had the opportunity to participate in a discussion group last night, and the response to this question is telling. So think it over--and don't try to come up with the snarkiest answer, unless of course the snarkiest answer is what the fourth grade you would say. In your head.

Send your friends over to play too!

Today was going to be the day.

2007-09-05T09:03:00.001-04:00

Today, I was going to finally release photos of my children to the blogging public. They were all showered, dressed, and beaming, outfitted in their first-day-of-school finest. Backpacks were on, lunch boxes in hand.

It was truly a Nikon moment.

As we scurried out the door I grabbed my camera, and once we were stationed at the bus stop, I started snapping away. Morning sun always makes for nice portraits, so my confidence was high. Stinkerbell, Bug, and The Divine Miss M were remarkably cooperative, standing this way and that, cheek to cheek and back to back--tricky with three kids.

Now, I don't mean to brag, but I can take a decent photograph. I have gigabytes of files to prove it. So, imagine my surprise when I came home from the bus stop and plugged my Nikon into my MacBook. One by one, the morning's memories sailed through the USB cable.

One by blurry one.

Every single photograph was blurry. I'm talking really blurry. Like the kind of blurry you might expect if someone were, say, jumping up and down while holding the camera. You know, like jumping for joy or something.

Man, I'm going to miss those kids.

A diversion, a distraction, a digression from tomorrow

2007-08-30T21:15:00.000-04:00

Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote the following (incomplete) blog post. It has been lingering in draft-status, so I thought I'd post it tonight. Mostly because I don't want to blog about tomorrow.

I grabbed my bags, locked my doors, and scurried into the airport. T.F. Green was surprisingly quiet for a Monday morning. I had printed my boarding pass before leaving the house, but with the ban on liquids and gels in the cabin, I was forced to check my bag. Twenty-some-odd people stood in line ahead of me, each waiting to add their bags to the mountain at the x-ray machine. A man sat at a computer that displayed an image of each passenger's unmentionables, inspecting each bag before dismissing its owner.

As I loaded my shoes and jacket into the plastic bin for x-raying, I wondered what sort of mischief the bad guys have thought up, now that the tighter security measures have eliminated the old razor-blade-in-the-suburban-mommy's-flip-flop trick. The first time I flew after September 11, my underwire bra set off the metal detector, making for great dinner conversation that night.

My bags and I passed inspection and we trotted off toward Gate 17. Nary a seat was taken. That meant I would not likely have to sit love handle to love handle with a complete stranger as I had on the trip out. Maybe, just maybe, I would get my own row.

The capital letter A on my boarding pass indicated I would be in the first of three groups of passengers to board the plane. I chose a seat near the corral, nearly guaranteeing myself first pick at a seat. With an hour until take-off, and probably 45 minutes until boarding, I pulled out my book and started to read.

CLEAR AND PRESENT GAP IN THE STORY

As we backed away from the gate, I happened to look over and catch a glimpse of the woman seated across the aisle, at the opposite window. Pleasant in appearance, the middle aged woman was well dressed, in a dark blue pants suit with a scoop-necked, white blouse. Her hair was collar length, layered, permed, and probably colored. Together with well manicured nails and just the right amount of makeup, the overall effect was that of a well-put-together individual.

I glanced out my window and watched as the ground crew directed the pilot in the secret language of aviation workers. We backed out, swung around, and began taxiing toward the runway.

I couldn't help but notice the fervor with which the woman across the aisle was chewing her gum, which led me to notice that she was white-knuckling the arm rests, closing her eyes, and breathing deeply.

She came up for air and caught me looking at her. I smiled, hoping to convey sympathy, and asked her if she was okay. She shook her head and struggled to fight back the tears.

Suddenly, I regretted having commandeered an entire row for myself. I had never met this woman before, never even laid eyes on her. But I was kicking myself for not sitting next to her.

It wasn't that long ago I was a rookie air traveler, white knuckles and all. Perhaps I could have offered her some kind of reassurance, or even held her hand and we barreled down the runway.

As she wiped away a tear, I considered moving across the aisle. Had I done that to begin with, had I made a gesture of friendship to a total stranger, perhaps we would both feel better.

But it was clearly too late for relocation. The flight crew had begun their routine of orienting passengers to the emergency exits and demonstrating seat belt operation.

A voice spoke out from the speakers above our heads.

"In the event of an emergency, your seat cushion can be used as a floatation device. Although we do not anticipate a change in cabin pressure, should it become necessary, four oxygen masks will drop down from the compartment above…"

I know from experience that this sort of advice only adds to the angst if you are afraid of flying.

As we waited our turn on the runway, a flight attendant sailed down the center aisle and slid into the seat next to my neighboring passenger.

I didn't have to hear the words to know that this young man was reassuring one of the countless nervous travelers he must see in the course of his work week. He reached over and covered her hand with his for a moment. Her expression was one of gratitude.

They spoke for a minute, and he returned to his duties.

The engines roared and we could feel the plane gearing up for the sprint down the runway. I looked over again, and sent the woman a mental message, reminding her, as I often remind myself, that the pilot wants to arrive safely as much as we do.

The 737 was gaining speed, faster and faster until it left the earth, nose pointed toward the sky. I watched out the window as the ground below morphed into what always reminds me of an elaborate play set, with little houses, and little streets, and tiny little cars and trains. As we climbed higher and higher, the plane began to turn toward our destination.

Before it seemed safe to do so, the flight attendant reappeared in the seat next to the woman in the blue suit. She was breathing deeply and clearly trying not to look out the window. The flight attendant reached across her and closed the shade. She laughed a nervous laugh. They spoke for a few more minutes as the plane leveled off.

(At the risk of sounding like a commercial, I always choose Southwest when I fly, and seeing the crew attend to that woman made me promise, silently, that I always will.)

Once we were safely on our way, I turned to the woman and asked her if she was okay.

"Yeah," she said, the relief evident on her face. "That was awful."

That was awful? I thought to myself. Wait until we land.

No matter how many times I fly, I am never fully comfortable with the concept of landing. One minute, we are traveling through the air at 500 miles per hour. The next minute, we are diving toward the ground, wheels extended. It defies logic.

I was relieved to learn that it is not brakes alone that are responsible for stopping this massive hunk of steel in the driveway. Apparently there is an elaborate system of reversing engines, flaps, and a litany of prayers involved in bringing this bird down from the sky.

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen. We're at about 41,000 feet right now. It looks like we're in for a smooth ride. I'm going to go ahead and turn of the seat belt light."

After a quick weather update, the captain thanked us for joining him, and asked us to sit back and enjoy the flight.

About an hour into the flight, the friendly crew member returned to check on the woman. They chatted for a bit, her, no doubt, explaining why she was so nervous. I imagined this was her second flight. Her level of fear told me she knew what to expect and it scared the crap out of her.

For a split second, her level of fear scared me. I wondered if she knew something I didn't know, something ominous. Pre 9/11, I never would have wondered that.

I quickly shook the momentary paranoia.

The last flowers of summer

2007-08-30T11:07:00.000-04:00

You'll be happy to know

2007-08-28T00:42:00.001-04:00

The iLap has nearly eliminated the charring on my left thigh.

Stinkerbell made it safely out of the tree.

I did not steal this photo. I took it all by myself.

It is 4.85 miles to the soccer field.

And, we are going to Boston on Friday.

Calling all geeks

2007-08-25T00:01:00.000-04:00

As you are no doubt tired of hearing, over the past year, I have lost 35 pounds (or 30, depending on how much ice cream I consume between weigh-ins). My success was due in large part to healthy eating, and in larger part to the support of my friends. However, with another 15 pounds to go, I'm afraid it's time for desperate measures.

It's time to exercise.

Amazing as it may seem, I have done little or no exercise on my weight-loss journey. But, until I get my arse in gear, chances are my arse won't be shrinking any further.

Sure, I can swim. Yes, I have a bike. And, I am the owner of a tennis racket, roller blades, and a large rubber band with handles at each end. But walking is the one exercise I go back to when I start feeling like a slug.

If someone drags me.

Walking is free. It requires no special training. You can do it in your own neighborhood, or in someone else's. And yet, still it feels like torture.

All right, all right, it's not that bad. In fact, with the right walking partner (i.e. a good gabber), the time actually flies by. It's just a matter of getting out there and hitting the streets.

In separate but not irrelevant news, there is something very satisfying in knowing exactly how far I have walked. I mean, if I'm going to spend an hour or so wandering around town, I want to be able to brag about it later—and bragging is much more impressive with hard facts, documentable data, proof, as it were.

Which brings me (finally) to the point.

You must check this out. Whether you live in Illinois (Hi!), California (Cheers!), New York (Hello!), Tampa (nice of you to stop by), Massachusetts (Howdy!), or even London (Miss you!), this site will forever change your daily walk.

But only if you are a geek, like me.

Out on a limb

2007-08-24T09:58:00.000-04:00

Next stop

2007-08-23T14:51:00.000-04:00

There are many side effects to radiation.

Fear, anxiety, depression, hypertension, insomnia, denial, trouble communicating.

And that's just the family.

The patient experiences fatigue, skin irritation, dizziness, confusion, general malaise.

My OtherFather is still smiling and he laughs, though he is slower to do both. He can walk around just fine, with only an occasional teeter. His speech has improved since he initially checked into the hospital, only now it is filled with reminiscing and talk of finishing up projects around the house.

At the end of the 10 day course of radiation, the stout-middle aged oncologist assured us that the radiation must have done what it's expected to do. Because that's what it does.

Is there any follow-up test? Any kind of scan or imaging to confirm the tumors have shrunk?

"Not generally," Dr. Stout responded, as he scribbled, on a photocopy of the calendar, detailed instructions for weaning my OtherFather off of the steroid treatment. Plus cut back on the lorazepam, from three times a day to once a day.

"I don't know why they had you taking it three times," he said. "That wasn't my idea."

What is it for?

"Basically it's a tranquilizer. We gave it to him in the hospital to help him sleep."

No wonder he's been walking around in a daze.

"Yeah."

More scribbling. Come back in a few weeks. Let him know if there are any new symptoms. Don't drive until October or so.

That's it? That's all? What about the other cancer? What about the source of these brain tumors? Where did they come from and how can we find out?

"We're going to stay on top of this," said Dr. Stout, with little or no emotion in his voice.

We all walked away, my mother, my OtherFather, and myself, all not sure of how to take the news—or if there was, in fact, any news at all.

Next stop, Boston.

I must be dreaming

2007-08-16T20:09:00.000-04:00

Those four words have no doubt been uttered by millions of people who have found themselves in the unexpected and incomprehensible position of hearing the "c" word uttered in their presence.

Are you sure? Could it be anything else? Aren't there tests? Scans? Labs? Anything that will reveal that this is all a big mistake?

There are two lesions on his brain, they said. We're not sure what they are, but they're causing the stroke-like symptoms: headache, dizziness, difficulty with speech. We'll need to admit him and do an MRI in the morning.

This, after a CT scan, followed by an x-ray, just before several vials of blood were filled from my OtherFather's vein.

But he looks fine. See? He's smiling. He's laughing. He's teasing the nurses. It can't be. It just doesn't make sense.

The next day, we sat listening to the stout, middle-aged oncologist explain that these lesions—oh, and there are several, not two—these lesions are on various parts of his brain, putting pressure on various triggers, triggers for speech and balance.

So, when you say lesions, do you mean tumors?

"Yes."

Huh.

Dr. Stout isn't sure where they're coming from. More tests. Then we'll see.

So, when you say tumors, do you mean cancer?

"Yes."

Huh.

Oddly, no one reacts. Oddly, we all just take it in. My mother, my OtherFather, myself, we just take it in.

So then what?

We need to figure out where these tumors are coming from, because they didn't originate in the brain.

Meaning, they metastasized. That's cancer-speak for traveled to another location to wreak havoc. The cancer is someplace else. Once they find it, we can make a plan.

It's Friday. The test is Saturday. The results will come Monday. In the meantime, steroids will shrink the tumors, lessen the symptoms.

Oddly, no one reacts. Meals are eaten. Visits are made. Idle chatter fills the air around the cancerous elephant in the room. Because, really, the cancerous elephant in the room is quite invisible. He looks just like himself. He laughs just like himself. And, with the help of the steroids, he even talks just like himself.

This is not what cancer looks like.

On Monday, the news is no news. They're not quite sure. A couple of spots on the lungs could be anything, and there is no evidence of cancer anywhere else. But it's there somewhere. We need to be prepared that it will turn up somewhere. Anywhere.

Radiation begins the next day.

Reality begins to set in.

Like little bursts of joy from nature....

2007-08-09T23:20:00.001-04:00

...Flowers are the quintessential symbol of happiness.

Mysterious bruising, and cancer

2007-08-06T23:33:00.000-04:00

I had a blog entry all drafted in my head last week, about a mysterious bruise on my leg, just about my left knee, about five inches in diameter.

The story would have started about a month ago, when I first notice the patch of blotchiness beneath my skin. I would probably have rattled off a list of possible ailments that could have created a long lasting bruise—including leukemia. Then I would likely have detailed for you how I uncovered the mystery by Googling a series of words, including "leukemia bruises" and "laptop use legs bruise" and even "laptop cooked my leg."

In the end, I would have wrapped up the tale of woe by warning you, my virtual friends, of the dangers of using a laptop while wearing shorts, and by endorsing the iLap, which, by the way, is a great way to avoid an unevenly tanned patch of skin on your left leg if you are a MacBook user. We might have even shared a laugh when I confessed that I was already the owner of the iLap at the time of the browning, but I was using it more on my desk than on my lap.

Sadly, I never got around to writing that blog entry. Instead, I was distracted by talk of cancer, brain tumors, and radiation therapy in my family, none of which I've figured out whether or how to blog about.

Cancer has a funny way of putting things into perspective.

Happy Anniversary, girls!

2007-08-04T16:27:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday marked one year since the chubby trio (of which I was one) began our journey toward healthier living. Each of us was a far bigger person than we needed to be. We knew it. The people around us knew it. The owners of the ice cream shop knew it.

Mrs. Friend, Mrs. Pal, and Mrs. Me (as we are known on the sidebar) each had a load to lose. None of us were really all that interested in becoming waiflike supermodels. We just wanted to stop looking like Chubby Suburban Mommies, which we often discussed over waffle cones of super-rich home made ice cream at the creamery.

The whole thing started after Mrs. Pal's annual checkup, at which time her doctor told her she had gained 10 pounds in a year and dropped a couple of words like diabetes and cholesterol just to spook her. She called me later that day, announcing she was fatter than she had ever been in her life (pregnancy excluded). Oddly, she didn't sound that concerned about it. Mrs. Pal was a snacker and overall bad eater, and there was no great mystery as to how she ended up in this mess. Although she was never terribly vocal about her weight struggles, she was famous for wearing tent-like coordinates under which she attempted to hide. It didn't work.

Meanwhile, I was also fatter than ever. And, like Mrs. Pal, I was largely (ahem) responsible for the mess I was in. Unlike Mrs. Pal, who rarely complained, I was forever whining about my girth. I was disgusted with myself, inside and out. I equated fat with failure, which is ironic because I'm something of a perfectionist. For someone so determined to control every single aspect of my own life, this was one thing I could not get a handle on. My desire to be thin was outweighed by my need to grab a Snickers Almond bar at the checkout stand—to go with the Hershey Bar or Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or whatever else I had already grabbed. Not only was a I big eater, I was a sneaky eater. Compulsive, you might say.

So, when Mrs. Pal called me a few days before August 1 of last year to complain about her 10 pounds, I was even more surprised than she was when I asked her if she wanted to go on a diet together. We would begin the day after Mrs. Pal's birthday, on August 1.

Mrs. Friend is another story. Mrs. Friend is the one of us who appeared to be the least unhappy about her weight. She was the kind of person who said, "I like to eat. I like my fat. I don't care." And she seemed to genuinely mean it. Except for the occasional joke at her own expense, she almost never discussed weight or dieting.

After Mrs. Pal and I agreed it was time to do something about our growing status as CSMs, it was only a matter of minutes before I picked up the phone and called Mrs. Friend. Our conversation went something like this:

Hey you.

"Hi!"

I have a question.

"Okay."

Now, don't take this the wrong way, and I'm not sure how to say this without making you take this the wrong way, but Mrs. Pal and I have decided to go on a diet together, and I was wondering if you want to join us.

"A diet?"

Yes. You know, where we stop eating like pigs, weigh ourselves weekly, and report in with our progress.

"I don't know."

And I'm not trying to tell you you need to go on a diet.

"Well we all know I need to go on a diet."

So, are you in?

"I'm in!"

Only problem was, Mrs. Friend had never been on a diet before. Go ahead. Read that last sentence again. Mrs. Friend had never been on a diet before.

The next several weeks included daily conversations between the three of us, plotting our strategies, sharing our food finds, and educating Mrs. Friend about calories, fat, and fiber, and how they worked together to earn points on the Weight Watchers program. She was a quick study and together the three of us lost an entire (short) person over the next eight months.

Why am I telling you all of this, you ask?

Because I'm not done fighting the battle. I have a very all-or-nothing mentality about food (and just about everything else). Some days the hot fudge sundae is too hard to resist, and I'm still making peace with that. Eating a sundae is not failure. Eating a slice of pizza is not failure. Eating a mammoth sized bowl of (slow-churned) ice cream and counting it as 4 points when it is in fact 12 leads to failure….but only if you do it every night for a couple of weeks. Success is realizing it and adjusting accordingly.

Mrs. Pal is the queen of our club, weighing in 45.5 pounds less than last year at this time. Mrs. Friend is down 26 pounds, and I am down 30. Mrs. Pal is 13 pounds from her original goal. Mrs. Friend is 40 pounds from her original goal. I am 15 pounds from wedding weight, and 10 pounds from my original goal.

Every Tuesday morning, we do the call-around, to see where we're at. We have all lost weight. We have all gained weight. We have all given up for a week or three at a time. And we have all given each other the speech when we've needed it.

Last Wednesday marked one year since we, the former chubby trio, began our journey toward healthier living. Each of us is a far bigger person than we were. We know it. The people around us know it. The owners of the ice cream shop no doubt miss us.

We have moved our Tuesday Updates to Wednesdays, since this year's August 1 was on a Wednesday. I'm not sure how long we will continue to weigh in weekly, but I'm thinking it will be a long time.

This week, Mrs. Pal gained 3.5 pounds. I gained 3. And Mrs. Friend lost 2.

Gooooooooooooo team!

Inquiring minds

2007-07-26T13:25:00.000-04:00

"Hey Mom, does the tooth fairy know when you lost a tooth or does the tooth fairy come every day and check?" Bug wants to know.

That's a good question, Bug.

"It's a great mystery...." said my almost-eight-year-old, walking away.

Phew.

Why I should stay out of Panera Bread*

2007-07-25T09:26:00.001-04:00

On the same day I encountered the beautiful stranger
with her dress in a bunch, I had the dubious pleasure of sitting one table away from a party of three. Grandparents in their 60s and their granddaughter, who looked to be about five years old, sat at a small round table just a few feet from my medium rectangle in the Panera Bread dining room.

I first noticed the trio upon their arrival. The little girl was holding one grandparent in each hand, scurrying to keep up with them as they crossed the street and entered Panera.

I might never have thought of them again, had they not settled into the adjacent table. The little girl wiggled around in her chair as Granny scouted out some napkins. Gramps darted back and forth between the counter and the table a couple of times before planting himself across from his wife. The little girl was to his right. His back was to me.

With both eyes on my laptop, I tweaked a story about Madeira wine I'd been working on. But I couldn't help but overhear the chatter at the round table.

"I want you to know that when you move away from Granny, you can call Granny whenever you want," said Granny, stuffing her face with her sandwich to punctuate her sentence. Then, through the bread and lunch meat, she added, "We might have to not tell your mother, but that's another thing."

Nice, I thought. Teach the kid to be sneaky.

Although I have always been remarkably good at multi-tasking, I was struggling to focus on my proofreading.

Following what I gathered must have been some kind of disrespectful outburst from the little girl, Granny said, "Do you like it when your mother talks to you in a mean way?"

The girl shook her head.

"How does that make you feel?"

For reasons I'm not sure I can explain, my heart started pounding. Totally distracted from my editing, I responded to a couple of emails and checked the news headlines (with the help of Panera's free Wi-Fi). Meanwhile, bits of the conversation at the round table drifted toward me.

"I hope there are children in this place she's taking them," Granny said to Gramps. "Probably not." Then, turning to the girl, "You wish you had kids to play with, don't you? That would be nice but she didn't think of that."

What is wrong with this woman?

In my head, I was lecturing Granny, my imaginary voice getting louder and screechier with every word.

I'm sure that, on some level, you think you are helping your granddaughter by poisoning her against her mother, but you could not be more wrong.

As if she could hear me. I quietly hoped that Gramps would hush the woman. He did not.

You are cutting her to the core. It might not seem so now, but your words will hang in her head until the end of time.

I seriously considered speaking up, defending the child against the stupidity of her grandmother. I did not.

Your words will reverberate throughout her life and forever impact her relationship with her mother. Whatever happened between her mother and your son has nothing to do with the child. Leave her out of it.

I had never laid eyes on this woman. I had never met the child. Yet I was so moved, so impacted by this exchange, I could feel the tension reeling through my veins.

Be the grownup, Granny. Direct your anger to the mother, but don't send it by way of the little girl.

Granny pushed her chair away from the table, and headed for the door. While she fetched something from the car, I considered quickly speaking to Gramps, pleading with him to defend the little girl against the evil called Granny.

Instead, I packed up my MacBook and my notebook and headed for the door. Granny and I passed in the crosswalk. Our eyes met briefly, mine no doubt angry, hers clueless.

Next time I need a cool place to set up my laptop, I think I'll opt for the library.

*As if the chocolate croissants aren't reason enough.

Above and beyond

2007-07-20T00:02:00.000-04:00

Dressed in what she no doubt thought would be a cool, comfortable cotton knit dress, a beautiful stranger emerged from Panera Bread, her chic sunglasses perched on top of her head, her blonde tousled hair glistening in the sun, strappy sandals on her pedicured feet. She would have been a vision of summertime beauty, but for one little issue—an issue that was unlikely to be resolved any time soon.

I suppose a better person would have helped her out. A better person would have discretely brought the situation to her attention. I am not that better person.

No, I am the person sitting at my laptop, sipping a frozen lemonade, blogging about the beautiful stranger's fashion faux pas. Shame on me.

I might be inclined to tell someone that she has toilet paper stuck to her shoe, or a leaf stuck in her hair. I might even give her some kind of subtle signal to indicate she has leftover spinach salad in her teeth. But this goes above and beyond the call of women-sticking-together duty.

What's really funny (sorry, lady) is that I would not have noticed her, uh, issue at all were it not for the chuckle of the man sitting next to me. I kid you not. There was a chuckle. I looked up from my laptop to see the source of his snicker. See I did.

There, standing less than two feet from the giggling guy, separated only by the plate glass window, was the back of the stranger lady. The back side that is. As in backside.

As helpful as I can be, I just can't imagine how either the lady or I could survive me telling her she had a third-degree sweaty wedgie, which, by the way, ruined the whole outfit.

Eesh.

Fearless warrior

2007-07-08T22:44:00.000-04:00

This is the boy who, at 18 months, stood on a Golden Book, arms spread out to the sides to help him balance as he exclaimed, "Whoa!" in response to the death-defying feat.

This is the boy who, at two-and-a-half, got down on his hands and knees and backed down off of the patio and onto the grass—the grass which, by the way, was flush with the patio.

This is the boy who never, ever, even once tried to climb out of his crib—even after we took the side rail off and converted it into a toddler bed.

Now nearly eight, Bug is a fearless warrior, conqueror of the wild steed, king of the speeding carousel.

Whoa!

Apple sucks.

2007-07-06T00:32:00.000-04:00

There is nary a bigger Apple fan than myself. Every computer I have ever owned has been some variety of a Macintosh, from my first MacPlus with a dual disk drive and ZERO internal memory (which I later upgraded with a 52MB external hard drive), to the then-speedy Performa 475, and on to the original Bondi-Blue iMac, followed by the slot loading iMac a few years later, then an iBook (which was more of a lemon than an Apple), and an iBook G4, before finally landing in my current MacBook. If all of that isn't enough, I am also the owner of an iPod, and the mother of an iPod Shuffle user (with another on the way)(Bug's birthday approaches).

Have I made my point? Not only have I been faithful—for years—I have also recruited others to the Land of Mac, that's how much I love Apple products.

Until now.

Now, the folks at Apple have come up with the iPhone, a handy little gadget that combines an iPod, a mobile phone, and a portable viewer of all things internet. On a recent trip to the Chicago Apple Store, I had the opportunity to play with the iPhone. In spite of all of the hype leading up to the iPhone's release, I didn't really have a good handle on all of the things this pocket computer could do: maps, email, web browsing, tunes, all with an engaging interface that is downright eye boggling.

I won't bore you with a full-length commercial for the thing, but did I mention it has a 2.0 megapixel camera? I took a picture of Stinkerbell in the Apple Store and instantly emailed it to my brother across the pond, all with a few swipes of the index finger.

Sure, it's slick. Yes, it's cutting edge technology. Indeed, it's a must have for all techno-geeks and Apple aficionados everywhere.

So what's the problem, you ask?

Apple has signed an exclusivity agreement with AT&T, declaring itself monogamous with one of the least reliable cellular service providers, based on my own experience with the company formerly known as Cingular and AT&T itself. It makes me wonder what Ma Bell has on Steve Jobs that would prompt such a deal.

As with any new gadget, it is likely prudent to wait for the next generation of iPhones to come out before jumping on the bandwagon. By then, many of the presumable bugs will be worked out, and the price might even drop a bit. But, as long as the iPhone is joined at the hip with AT&T, it won't be joined at the hip with me.

Coincidence? I think not....

2007-06-30T00:27:00.000-04:00

Crazy Aunt Purl blogged about what she calls her "evil arch nemesis" Friday morning. Seems her southern Californian neighborhood is being overrun by a loud and persistent ice cream truck, the sound of which is slowly driving her into chocolate coated insanity--on a stick.

Sure, I can understand how an endless loop of "It's a Small World" could make a person a little nutty. But, did someone say ice cream?? If someone is going to deliver a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich--right to my door--humming a few bars of the Disney classic tune seems a small price to pay.

I live in Suburbia, a place where one might expect ice cream trucks to be as common as soccer moms. However, for who knows what reason, neither creamsicles nor snow cones ever drive through my neighborhood. Ever. Which is what prompted me to post the following comment on Crazy Aunt Purl's blog, at 9:58 a.m.:

I wish I had an ice cream man. Minus the song. There's nothing quite like strawberry shortcake on a stick to say 'SUMMER!'

After clicking the POST button, I never gave it a second thought.

Flash forward six hours.

I had just dialed the phone, trying to reach a marketing director of a major craft supply retailer. In one ear, I heard, "You have reached the line of SoAnd So. I am either on another call or away from my desk…."

In the other ear, I heard a sound, a strangely familiar yet nearly impossible sound.

"If you need immediate assistance, please press zero for the operator. Otherwise, leave a message at the tone," my right ear heard.

My left ear heard the unmistakable tune of "Music Box Dancer" which seemed to be getting louder by the second.

Struggling to pay attention to my right ear, I bumbled my way through some kind of message, identifying myself and the reason for my call, all while opening the shade to see what I could not believe I was hearing.

There, in all its glory, was an ICE CREAM TRUCK!!

I am almost embarrassed to admit that the first thing I did was grab my camera. It's not that I've never seen an ice cream truck before. But all I could think about was Crazy Aunt Purl, and how she was never going to believe that, just a few hours after wishing for an ice cream truck, I got one.

As if she knows me. As if she cares.

My need to photograph the scene nearly cost me the opportunity to introduce my kids to the wonders of freezers on wheels, but we managed to chase down the ice cream truck on our bicycles.

Suppress your laughter. It was ice cream. Ice cream people.

Seaweed, crabs, and love

2007-06-27T14:45:00.001-04:00

In keeping with her commitment to take the kids off my hands one day a week during school vacation, my mother took Bug and Stinkerbell on an excellent summertime adventure at the beach this morning. Considering last week's not-so-excellent rainy-day adventure resulted in flying hotdog rolls (don't ask), I figured I'd better call mid-day and see how things were going.

After quick assurances from Mom, Stinkerbell demanded a turn on the phone. I really wish I could record these conversations, but since I was at my computer at the time, I figured I'd do the next best thing; type.

"Hi, Momma!!"

How was the beach?

"It was good."

Did you have fun?

"Yup."

What did you do?

"Beppie went into the ocean and she was swimming with us and Bug went into the deep end. Beppie let him go into the deep end. I was too scared. I was scared of the seaweed. It was really scary. But Beppie said Bug couldn’t go in the deep end without her. Only the middle end."

Really?

"Yeah, and I don't like seaweed. But Momma? You know what? The scariest, scariest, scariest part was when we left, people were throwing a hermit crab around, and one of them threw the hermit crab at their butt and it snapped their butt."

Oh my gosh, that's awful! I'll bet the crab didn't like that very much.

"Yeah. I bet he was mad. So I love you."

Clunk.

She was off and running.

Victory is mine!!!

2007-06-26T12:17:00.001-04:00

It's the little things that make me happy.

Like a nice garden, which, in this case, is not all that little.

We bought our house just over three years ago, and, while it's a lovely home today, suffice it to say that much tender-loving back-breaking work went into making it our own little paradise. Inside, every single surface in the house needed to be scrubbed and painted (minus the hardwood floors--those needed sanding and varnishing) (does anyone actually varnish anymore?), including the walls and ceilings in all four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, and hallways.

Fortunately, I love to paint.

We also gutted the kitchen, leaving only the first floor bathroom in need of a (somewhat controversial*) renovation.

Then there was the yard. What might have at one time resembled the bones of a basic landscaping plan became overgrown with obvious neglect over the few years prior to our arrival. In spite of my willingness to dig, haul, weed, plant, and spend, there are a few areas of the yard that I have, until now, been unable to conquer.

Like this one (as always, click for larger image):

As you can see, it's not that nice. We have Japanese iris, some dainty daisy-looking yellow-flowered perennial things, a Rose of Sharon bush, three red barberry bushes, and a weeping Japanese maple. All good parts. Almost all in the wrong place.

I should point out that this is not how the perennial bed looked when we arrived. It was overgrown with weeds and included a massive clump of the Japanese iris in the middle, which I have since divided and distributed elsewhere (the iris, not the weeds). Each year, I have made yet another attempt to revitalize this bed. Each year, I have failed miserably.

Until now.

After countless landscape-espionage missions, far-too-many trips to the local nurseries, and way too much time complaining about the pathetic state of affairs in my yard (wait, I'll post more photos later), Mrs. Pal hired a landscaper to swoop in and magically install flower beds in her yard. Although I planted not one same thing as Mrs. Pal has in her yard, what I did swipe was the idea of using rocks to create two separate areas.

In a whirlwind of shoveling, transplanting, and dragging rocks from various places on our property (and losing a pound in the process -- wahoo), followed by a quick trip to the greenhouse, here is my newly beloved garden:

Yes, it's still in the early stages. Or middle. I think I need some kind of evergreen something or other in front of the Stella D'oro daylilies (suggestions welcome). But for now, it's heaven.

Next:

*The controversy is in that we plan to rip out the jacuzzi--which has only been used once in three years, by The Divine Miss M.

Just when I thought there was nothing left to obsess over

2007-06-22T10:49:00.001-04:00

Last week, while Hubby and I were perusing family photos, I noticed something odd.

I have a big head.

"Yes, you do," Hubby said.

GASP!

"Your son has a big head too," he continued, clearly unaware of the damage he was doing.

Whaddaya mean??

"It's a Family thing," Hubby said, as if that was going to make me feel better.

So my family has big heads?

"Not all of them."

I can't believe you married a girl with a big head.

Gesturing toward our wedding picture, "It wasn't that big back then."

Twenty years into our relationship, and this is what it has come down to. My big head.

Is anybody out there?

2007-06-19T17:22:00.000-04:00

It's funny how blogging goes in spurts. Not just my blogging--even the blogging of the bloggers whose blogs I read. One favorite blog focused on the blogging reunion this week--that moment when the blogger (me) finally sits down to revisit the blog (here) and posts an entry for whatever straggling blog readers remain (you).

For the (delinquent) blogger, there is a self-imposed sense of pressure that mounts as time passes without blogging. I think about it daily and wonder what I could write about today. Sometimes I check my SiteMeter to see if anyone is checking anymore anyway. When oodles of time has elapsed, suddenly there is a need to write something hugely important, something wildly funny, or something earthshatteringly brilliant. Instead, you discover that Kristy hates pants.

Over the past few weeks, I have started and then stopped blogging about the following topics:

My new(ish) job
The challenge of gardening
The end of school
Greeting cards: leave the history out of it
The new babysitter
The total lack of summer clothes in my closet, which, I would have written, is a good problem to have, considering I have shrunk out of last year's tankini.

In the meantime, I just wanted to say hello, and thanks for stopping by. I know the posting has been scarce. But it's still nice to see you.

Up hill

2007-05-30T20:40:00.000-04:00

I know it's been a while. And I'm sure that, given the time lapse since my last post, you are probably expecting something profound, something of substance, something really, really important that brought me back here.

Sorry to disappoint.

At 8:39 p.m. eastern time, the telephone rang. At the other end was a little voice: "Is The Divine Miss M there?"

Did I mention that it was 8:39 p.m. eastern time? As in, 21 minutes before 9 p.m.? And since we're talking numbers, let me also point out for those of you who don't know Miss M--she's nine (9). In every time zone.

Uh, who is this?

"Friend."

Well, Friend, The Divine Miss M is in bed. And, just so you know, she cannot take calls after 8 p.m.

Click.

Wait! What was I thinking? After 8 p.m.?? The Divine Miss M goes to bed at 7 p.m!! (Well, she reads until 7:30, but still.)

You know, when I was nine, I wasn't even allowed to use the phone. Unless I was barefoot in the snow. Up hill. Both ways.

The funny thing about 35.5 pounds lost

2007-05-22T16:11:00.000-04:00

People who knew me then say welcome back.
People who know me now say you'll be back.
I just say yay.

Family secrets

2007-05-02T22:40:00.000-04:00

I know that I am not alone.

I know there are tens, hundreds, thousands, maybe even zillions of other grown children of divorced parents who have children of their own, many of whom, at some point or another, have struggled with how much of the truth to tell to their kids. And when.

Last weekend was apparently the time for The Divine Miss M, not because I decided it should be so, but because she suddenly had questions. Difficult questions. Questions I don't want to answer.

The funny thing about parenting is that children force us to face things we have long since learned to ignore. Things like the divorce of our own parents.

"So, if two parents have a baby and then they get divorced, who keeps the baby?" The Divine Miss M asked as we perused the aisles at the grocery store last week, in search of supplies to make her ninth birthday cake.

"It depends," I told her. "Usually the mother keeps the baby, but most of the time, the father shares the baby or comes to visit."

"How can you share a baby?"

"The parents sort of take turns," I explained. "Maybe the baby will sleep at one parent's house during the week, and at the other parent's house on the weekend."

"Is that what they did when you were a baby?"

Ouch.

"I wasn't a baby when my parents divorced," I said, carefully planning my answers to the questions which would no doubt follow. "I was a little younger than you."

I have so far been able to avoid explaining to the kids that Papa was absent for much of my childhood. I have also been able to avoid explaining why Hubby's father lives two towns over from us and I have never met him. Nor have I explained that Grandma has been married three times, or that I have two double-step nephews because my step-sister's husband has two sons from his first marriage.

How do I explain any of that to my children? I'm not sure I fully understand it myself. And how do I explain second marriages and third divorces without undermining their faith and security in their own family?

It's hard raising children in a perfect world when the world is so imperfect.

As for The Divine Miss M, well, I'm sure she will continue asking questions, and I'm sure Bug and Stinkerbell will join in soon enough. Maybe we can make sense of it all together.

It's kind of weird

2007-04-16T11:50:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, in a grocery store, in the small town of Suburbia, I had the following conversation with six-year-old Stinkerbell.

"Momma? That man's skin is black. Why is that man's skin black?"

Why is your skin pinkish white?

"Because it has a lot of colors, but that man's skin has no colors. It's only black."

It is black. Black is a color. That's what's great about the world. There are so many different kinds of people, with different colored hair and different colored eyes and different colored skin.

"It's kind of weird."

You're kind of weird Stinkerbell.

"I know. But aren't you glad that I waited until that man walked over there before I asked you?"

Yes. Yes I am.

The sweet sound of six

2007-03-29T23:53:00.002-04:00

In a rare, family-room, concert appearance Stinkerbell performed her rendition of this classic childhood tune....(click here)

Words cannot describe how proud we are of our sweet little girl....

Photographic memories

2007-03-16T20:40:00.000-04:00

Last week, Bug announced that he had to create a timeline of his life for school. This project was to highlight a minimum of four major events in his life, complete with dates, photos, and notes about the significance of the events. Sounds easy enough, right?

Like most mothers, I have boxes and boxes, filled with photographs of my children. During a short-lived scrapbooking phase a few years ago, I spent the better part of an eight hour scrapathon sorting my photos by date. Carefully marked dividers separate the stacks into seasons, special events, and holidays. (The negatives for all of these photos are stuffed into large envelopes--never to be used again, but far too important to throw away.)

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has more than one child that the number of photographs decreased proportionately with each of my additional children. I have 9,384,186 photos of The Divine Miss M. But, really, it's only 4,692,093 when you consider there are doubles of every shot. Lucky for Bug, he's the second of three children, so there are still a considerable number of photos of him in the boxes. Problem is, nearly half of Bug's life ago, I stopped shooting film and started shooting digital photographs. While digital photography allows me to shoot with reckless abandon, photo software has made it very easy to stop printing photos.

I stopped printing photos.

Zip.

Zero.

Almost Nada.

This is particularly sad in light of the fact that my brother was an integral part of the start-up of a now-major online digital print service several years ago. It's not that I didn't like their photos. I just never got around to ordering prints very often. And every time I did, I had such a hard time deciding which photos to print, because, again, I shoot with reckless abandon, making for a humongously large virtual stack of digital photos to choose from. To the moon and back. Seriously.

So, when the boy asked me for photos of significant events in his life, I was able to produce the day of his birth, his first Christmas, the day he met Stinkerbell (Bug was 17 months old when his sister was born), and a professional photo of him in his soccer uniform last year. Thanks to the generosity of film-shooting family and friends, I also managed to come up with a trip to the zoo and a birthday shot of Bug with his new bike. That's not to say that there are no other photos of Bug in the collection. But, with a second grader's idea of plenty of notice (the night before), I was hard pressed to do much better.

(For those of you who are explaining to me, either in your head or out loud, that I could have simply printed out a few digital photos for Bug's project on my Hewlett Packard Photosmart 7550, I have bad news. It's not that smart, that Photosmart. While it did a fair enough job printing photos from my iBook, I have since upgraded to a MacBook and suffice it to say that MacBook and HP are not getting along. In fact, they refuse to speak to each other. Irreconcilable differences. And, I sold my iBook on eBay.)

In the end, Bug brought his timeline to school and his friends agreed that the photo of five-month-old Bug on Santa's lap was by far the cutest. Crisis averted. Until Stinkerbell gets to second grade, anyway….

No One Cares What You Had For Lunch

2007-03-04T12:36:00.000-05:00

I first heard the title of this slim paperback book when my girlfriend-in-law added it to her Amazon.com wish list. The subtitle is: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, and with a name like that, what serious blogger wouldn't be interested in the secrets tucked between the covers? Maybe someone with an endless natural spring of creativity perhaps, but, sadly, that is not me (nor, as indicated by the book's presence on her wish list, my girlfriend-in-law). As I dropped the book into my virtual shopping cart on December 20, I grabbed a second copy for myself. Just in case.

Christmas came and went and the book stood at the ready on my nightstand for five or six weeks before I finally picked it up and read it. I'll spare you the full length book review and simply say, it probably wasn't the best $13.49 I ever spent on a book. But it wasn't the worst either. None of the ideas were particularly earth shattering, but they did prompt me to jot down a list of things I might someday blog about. Lucky you.

Like the time when I was five and I was playing over at Greg and Kenny's house and I stood on the slide to push the two-seater flying teeter-totter thing from the top and I somehow managed to get the ring finger on my right hand stuck inside the hollow pipe just as the thing was making the switch from teeting to totting. Yeow. Blood. Ice. Screaming. Doctor. Finger-condom for the remaining weeks of warm weather, prohibiting swimming or running through the sprinkler or scuba diving. Permanent deformity.

Now, that in itself isn't such a wild tale of adventure. But I thought maybe you might be interested in what kind of impact that experience had on me, and how self-conscious I have been all my life of the mangled excuse for a ring finger I ended up with and how I have gone through much of my life with said finger tucked into the center of my palm for fear people will say, "What happened to your finger?"

Then I remembered my policy against whining and complaining on my blog, a policy I generally manage to follow, so I crossed that off my list, along with a rant about how the price of paper towels keeps going up, while the number of sheets per roll keeps going down.

Maybe I could take the suggestion of blogging about past New Year's resolutions and discuss my successes and failures, and share my resolution strategies. Yeah. Only if I'm trying to chase people away from my blog. (Yawn.) (Wait. I think I blogged about that already….)

I also considered blogging about my Department 56 Christmas in the City village and posting pictures of the little porcelain people in the imaginary park, surrounded by a dozen or so of the buildings I have collected so far.

Or, I could post pictures of my cat.

I did end up with a few decent items on my "to blog" list, but I'm keeping those to myself for now. Maybe forever. (I'm not the best secret-sharer in the world….)

In the meantime, I posted "No One Cares What You Had For Lunch" on eBay. The starting bid was $.99, with a $9.99 buy-it-now option. Just a few hours later, it was gone. In the end, I lost only $3.50 and an hour so of reading time, and someone else gained 100 ideas for their blog.

Ready, aim, fire

2007-02-09T22:17:00.000-05:00

I am fascinated with nothing. Specifically, photographs of nothing. I'm not talking about polar-bears-in-the-snow nothing, but rather much ado about nothing nothing. There is a certain challenge in taking a picture of something mundane, something utterly boring, and making it look, like, well, almost artish. Keep in mind, art is in the eye of the beholder, and since I am beholding the camera, it's my art, good, bad, or boring.

I'm not sure how my obsession with nothing began, but it has taken on a new life since I started writing a weekly real estate feature. Close-ups of a pile of chocolate chip cookies or a shot of a rusty nail have been replaced with countless pictures of a variety of architectural details. With my trusty Nikon in hand, I tour houses, snapping scads of digital photos as I go. Some of the photos will be published with the feature. Some are what I call "visual notes" for the article I will later write about the house. And the rest are strictly for my own entertainment. In most cases, my favorite photos reveal almost nothing about the house itself. Instead, they focus on some element of the house that caught my eye.

An alternating pattern of three different baluster styles

A candle light fixture with amber, ruby, and sapphire glass

A low-tech intercom system

A gate connecting the front and back yards

The door lion

Now, if only I could find a market for my useless art.

(Click a photo for larger view.)

What I love about six

2007-02-07T12:04:00.000-05:00

When you're six, making your bed includes tucking in your furry friends.

Through the eyes of babes

2007-02-05T19:29:00.000-05:00

With her ninth birthday just around the bend, The Divine Miss M has begun battering me with a barrage of questions about her body. When will I be as tall as you? Why do ladies have boobies? How does the baby get into the mother's belly?

Ah, the joys of parenting.

So, when Miss M asked me if she could start wearing deodorant soon, I thought this might be a good opportunity to avoid what could no doubt be an uncomfortable conversation for both of us one day in the not-too-distant future. Does she need deodorant? Certainly not. But I'd rather have her smell good prematurely than have to tell her she stinks while she is PMSing. That could get ugly.

In the interest of promoting good personal hygiene, Hubby and I took a trip to the local WalMart, where we spent a ridiculous amount of time sniffing deodorant sticks, trying to find the one that says, "I smell pretty," without saying "My mother is letting me grow up too fast." Oddly enough, we settled on Passion Flower. (Who gets paid to name smells? And how do I get that job?)

When we came home, I quietly told The Divine Miss M about her surprise. Delighted, she jumped and clapped, with excitement only a child could adequately express. She rifled through the white plastic bags, in search of her treasure. (I'm not going to tell you that Miss M kissed the deodorant, as that would just be too embarrassing for her….)

With her Secret in hand, she headed for her room, passing Stinkerbell along the way. Not wanting to miss out on anything, Stinkerbell began battering her big sister with a barrage of her own questions. What is that? Is that for you? Does Momma know you have that? Where did you get it?

I opened my mouth to offer up an explanation for my sweet little six year old, but before I had a chance, she said, "M, why do you need that? You don't even have any boobies!"

Needless to say, we all fell into a pile of laughter, Stinkerbell included. When we came up for air, I explained to Stinkerbell that, although I do lift up my shirt and apply the deodorant underneath, it is in fact applied to the armpits. Not the boobies.

Breaking News: Tyra is fat

2007-01-25T14:09:00.000-05:00

Hey, have you heard the news? Tyra Banks has tipped the scales at a whopping 161 pounds! Photos of her have appeared in the tabloids, with a number of nasty nicknames needling her new body size. At the peak of her modeling career, Ms. Banks reportedly weighed 130 pounds. Super modeling. Super skinny starve-yourself-for-the-runway modeling.

Did I mention that Tyra Banks is 5'10"?? A quick check of several body weight charts indicates that the healthy weight range for a woman of her height is somewhere around 139 to 167 pounds. You don't need the initials M.D. after your name to figure out that, first of all, she was below the normal weight range at 130, and, second of all, 161 is within the range—not fat.

And you wonder why most of Female America has a warped sense of body image.

Every major news outfit is reporting today that Tyra Banks is fighting back against her critics, defending her weight as being healthy. But the critics are ever critical. In reporting the story this morning, Julie Chen referred to Ms. Banks as plus-sized on The Early Show. I'm sorry. Did you say plus-sized? Are you kidding me??

Yes, more than half of the population of this country is overweight—nearly 65 percent, in fact. But if we are going to call Tyra Banks overweight, that number is way too low. By those standards, I would argue that 80 percent of American must be fat. Maybe more. And, frankly, if that's what fat looks like, the words "Tyra is fat" are starting to sound not so bad.

I have no research to support my claim, but I would be willing to bet that this kind of Tyra-Banks-is-fat attitude makes people fatter. It makes people give up hope, because the goal of being thin is so unattainable. I am 5'9" myself, and if someone told me I should weigh 130 pounds, I wouldn't even bother to try. I was 135 pounds as a junior in high school, a weight I was only able to maintain through fasting and fistfuls of laxatives, but that's a tale for another time. If at 5'10" and 161 pounds this gorgeous woman is criticized for being fat, how unrealistic are our standards?

Tyra, you are my hero. Even if you pronounce your name wrong….

American Idol or American Fool?

2007-01-21T16:46:00.000-05:00

Yes, Simon is mean. Yes, Paula is drunk. Yes, Randy says, "Dog," and "Dude," way too much. And, yes, we all know that the well-paid panel of three American Idol judges can be harsh critics, to say the least.

What I cannot figure out is why, oh why some of these people show up to audition. Sure, there's something to be said for stealing fifteen minutes of fame, but if it was at the expense of my dignity, well, no thanks. I'd rather be a nobody than be the somebody everybody is laughing at from the comfort of their own homes. And what does it say about us as a society that we find pleasure in watching others fail miserably?

American Idol is a wildly popular show, one I have come to enjoy. However, to me, there are two distinctly different American Idol programs—the often embarrassing and sometimes painful-to-watch auditions, and the real, sing-your-heart-out competition that gives hope to people who can sing, that they, too, can be an American Idol. I doubt there are many folks sitting in their living rooms, dreaming of becoming the next American Fool.

There has been much chatter over the past week about how much meaner the judges are this year. Frankly, the contestants seem to be more aggressive as well, which encourages the verbal sparring during the show. It makes me wonder if the not-so-talented stand in line for hours on end just to get a shot at Simon.

Why not skip the whole process of hand-picking the worst of the worst (in what must be an elaborate system of prequalification) to stand before the "big three" judges, just because it makes for good television? Just bring on the talent already.

Yo. Dude. Bring it on.

Thank goodness for sisters

2007-01-19T10:18:00.000-05:00

In a round of rough-housing I didn't witness, the details of which I cannot quite decipher, the front tooth of my beautiful little boy became partially dislodged this morning. Bug bounced down the stairs before school, grinning proudly as his upper incisor (a.k.a. smiling tooth) flapped in the wind.

The sound that came out of my mouth was somewhere between a gasp and a scream—not just because his tooth was loose, but because this same tooth was firmly in place when he went to bed last night and now it was hanging on by a thread.

Clearly there was a story. Clearly no one wanted to tell me. All I know is that a rabbit was involved—and, of course, Stinkerbell. No really good story happens in our house without Stinkerbell having some role in it. As Bug rattled on about stuffed bunnies and some kind of game and how Stinkerbell didn't mean to wiggle his tooth, I was ducking and weaving, trying to avoid losing an eye if that tooth came flying out at any second.

I begged the boy to stop talking so we could assess the damages. Happy to help, Bug lodged his tongue under the tooth and wagged it at me. Ew. It was time to call in a professional.

"Where's your sister?" I asked.

The Divine Miss M delights in pulling out teeth—hers or anyone else's. I should probably worry about this fascination of hers, but, frankly, pulling teeth gives me the heebie-jeebies, so it's nice to have an amateur dentist in the house. Her technique could use a little work (from what I hear—I can't watch either), as the last two teeth she pulled went down the drain during the cleaning phase. Sadly, they were both Bug's. We were able to recover one of them for the tooth fairy, but the other one is just a fond memory.

Long before the school bus arrived to cart the children away, The Divine Miss M took her patient into the bathroom, her holding a paper towel, him clutching his teddy bear. Moments later, Holey Face emerged, his tooth in hand.

"You know, Mom, sometimes it comes in handy to have a big sister," he said.

Yes it does.

Wicked good

2007-01-17T20:31:00.000-05:00

What if Glinda wasn't really good? What if the Wicked Witch of the West wasn't wicked at all? And what if there was even more hiding behind the curtain than a little man, pretending to be the Wizard?

If all of this seems possible to you, perhaps you were in the same audience as I was this week, watching the Broadway musical Wicked as it made a stop in Providence, Rhode Island on its national tour.

Wicked is a delightfully clever twist of a prequel to one of my family's most favorite movies ever—The Wizard of Oz. Questions I didn't realize I had were answered: Why was the tin man tin? Why was the lion such a coward? How did the scarecrow end up in that field? And what about those flying monkeys?

The story begins long before Dorothy tumbled out of her tornado tossed farmhouse and into the Land of Oz. It begins with a tale of two young girls, each studying to become a sorceress. One was blonde. One was green—emerald green. Galinda and Elphaba. As the story progresses, we learn that Galinda gave up her "Ga" for a good cause, shortening her name to Glinda, that Elphaba would eventually come to be called The Wicked Witch, and that the two young girls were, in fact, the best of friends.

The music was great. The cast was even better. And there was no shortage of laughter in the audience as the show poked fun at and made sense of the timeless classic. Everything you thought you knew about the Wizard of Oz is turned upside down during the two hour show, and we are reminded once again that things are not always what they seem. Sometimes, if you take the time to consider the other side of the story, you might be surprised.

And the ending!!! Oh my….the ending is quite something….

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce.....

2007-01-04T10:21:00.000-05:00

....My grandmother (click here)

Lost treasures found

2007-01-03T23:32:00.000-05:00

You can't see me—but I'm jumping up and down right now. Okay. No I'm not. I'm typing. But I'm jumping up and down on the inside.

Remember that small, metal, antique box I told you about? The one with the tape of my grandmother singing Happy Birthday to me? I found it! I found it! I really, really found it!! And, I wasn't even looking for it—but isn't that always the way when a treasure is lost?

It all started with my list of Seven in 07. In my attempt to follow through on Resolution 2, I decided it was high time I drag the treadmill out of the storage area and into the family room.* So much time had passed since the treadmill was stashed away that several dust bunnies and their extended families had made their home on and around the instrument of torture. I dragged the shop vac out and evicted the fuzz balls by way of suction. That's when I noticed the purple storage tote standing quietly behind the former location of the treadmill.

"Hmm," I said aloud. "I wonder what's in there?"

Under the plastic purple lid was a heap of framed photographs, carefully wrapped in newspapers and neatly stacked inside the box. One by one I unwrapped the frames, cleaning the glass as I went. That's when I saw the photo of my grandparents from probably 20 years ago. As I lifted it out of the box, I couldn't believe my eyes. There, under the pile of framed memories was the small, metal, antique box. A quick shake confirmed what I already knew. The cassette tape from my long-since-discarded Code-A-Phone answering machine was inside, along with the pile of notes from a Christmas scavenger hunt many years ago.

By the end of the day, I found someone (with Hubby's help) who had a micro-cassette recorder I could borrow. I'll spare you the details about the hoops through which I jumped to transfer the recording—which was playing at half its normal speed for reasons I do not quite understand—to my computer, speed it up, and convert it to an MP3 file. But, in the end, I heard something I never thought I would hear again, my grandmother's warm, alto voice, singing to me on my birthday, many years ago.

Now if I could only figure out how to post it to Ramblings and Reflections….

*where it still stands, longing for someone to take it for a walk

Seven in 07

2007-01-01T14:04:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay. Time for some serious resolutionizing.

1. Blog more.
It's not that I forget necessarily, I am just mindful of the risk of boring people to death, so I am always watching and waiting for something worthy of blogging. Because, really, no one cares what I had for lunch.

2. Move more.
I'd be lying if I said this is likely to happen, but no list of New Year's resolutions would be complete without some reference to physical fitness (or lack thereof).

3. Finish decorating.
Since the beginning of time (or, since I have had my own place of living), I have been wall challenged. I'm sitting in my bedroom right now, and there is one framed 5 x 7 photo of a cobblestoned street in France hanging on the wall—and that was a gift from my brother. I am terrible at picking out wall art, so I don't. My philosophy to this point has been that it's better to have bare walls than to have random crap hanging on them. Time to rethink.

4. Read more, and better.
Not only do I want to read more books, I want to read more meaningful books, books that teach me something about life, the world, politics, history, people, motorcycles. Okay, not motorcycles. I got carried away.

5. Spend time better.
Much of our time is spent running from one place to the next, whether it's work or dance class or basketball practice or grocery shopping. Spending time playing games with the kids or having a quiet evening with Hubby is often squeezed out of the time schedule by other things.

6. Pay it forward
I currently volunteer at the SmallTown Community Center, but I would like to get involved in other charitable activities as well, maybe even something I could introduce my children to.

7. Write the outline for my first book.
How's that for a lofty goal?

May 2007 be filled with healthy, happiness, and plenty to blog about!!

Happy New Year!

2006-12-31T22:51:00.000-05:00

What would you resolve to do if you knew you could actually do it, no matter how impossible or unlikely it may seem?

We all make empty promises to ourselves on the eve of the New Year, but what if, just this once, you could really change something in your life? What if you could change something big, something important, something profound? What would it be?

Last year, my list of resolutions included things like reading more books, exercising, losing weight—real original, huh? I also resolved to take more pictures, learn to play the guitar, and try a new recipe at least once a month. Wahoo. Those are real change-your-life commitments.... The good news is, I did manage to accomplish more than half of the twelve items on
my resolution list. The bad news is, I'm not sure my life is any better because of it.

Not that my life is bad, just to be clear.

Maybe I'll resolve to make better resolutions. Or, maybe I'll make monthly mini-resolutions instead. Paint Bug's room in January. Organize the hall closet in February. Learn about Ireland in March. You get the idea.

I know! I know! How about I resolve to stop posting Photo Booth pictures???

Heh, heh, heh....

Happy New Year!!

Someone stop me!!!

2006-12-24T22:28:00.000-05:00

I cannot be the only MacBook user who finds this wildly entertaining....

OOOH!! A contest!!

2006-12-23T23:55:00.000-05:00

Naturally, upon receiving my new MacBook, the first order of business was to see what sort of fun tricks it could do. This is, by far, the most entertaining. The only thing more fun than this would be to read your suggestions for a caption to go along with this kooky image....

Photo by Photo Booth, more fun than a girl should have on her computer....

Movers and shakers beware

2006-12-18T23:35:00.000-05:00

The holidays are a time of memories, a time to reflect on years gone by, a time to cherish and preserve family traditions, a time to shake all of the presents under the tree and try to guess what's inside.

Yes, folks, I am a mover and a shaker, a guesser and a spoiler. Trying to figure out what's in the package is an event in itself, one that dates back to the early days of my childhood. Amid cries of "Just open it!" I would feel the package and listen to the rattle or thump as I shook it. As you can imagine, this was maddening to those around me. As I got older, my tactics became more advanced, until, sadly, one day, I opened a present. Like before Christmas.

Did I mention that the holidays are also a time for confession and forgiveness?

I was about 12 or 13 that year. My mother had wrapped all of the presents and tucked them under the tree. All but one. With several days to go until Christmas Eve, I discovered one small package, wrapped in Christmas paper, sitting on top of the antique ice box in our kitchen. I was alone at the time. Alone with a package—a package with my name on it, and no witnesses.

Now that I am a mother myself, I am amazed and impressed at how, sometimes, the crimes of children need no punishment. Sometimes the crime itself teaches an important life lesson.

But, I digress.

On that fateful, life changing day, I committed the ultimate gifting offense: unauthorized opening. Imagine my horror when I discovered what was inside—a note in my mother's handwriting:

"Nothing under the tree from OtherFather and me. Too bad you've been such a bad girl this year. Maybe you should keep looking."

I was at once guilt-stricken for having peeked, mortified at having been set-up, and horrified at the possibility that there were in fact no presents for me under the tree at all. Clearly my mother fully expected me to open the box. Clearly she knew I was a peeker, and that I would take the bait. As I rewrapped the gift, any remaining Christmas spirit drained out of me.

When Christmas Eve finally came, we gathered around the tree for the gift exchange, and my mother handed me the small package. I tried to muster up as much excitement as I could, knowing that I was about to be revealed as the sneaky snooper I was.

Or so I thought. What happened instead was unbelievable.

I opened the little box, and tucked inside was the same handwritten note. Strangely, my mother was nearly jumping up and down with excitement, demanding that I read it out loud. It wasn't bad enough that I was busted, but I had to share my humiliation with others—all to the apparent delight of my mother.

"Nothing under the tree from OtherFather and me. Too bad you've been such a bad girl this year. Maybe you should keep looking."

Laughter all around, followed by, "Well? Start looking!"

Somewhere in my house I have a little box that holds all of the notes I collected that night, in an elaborate scavenger hunt laid out by my mother and my brother. The last note went something like, "Wrong again. Maybe you should look outside. (Don't look in the garage.)"

As any self-respecting kid would, I went immediately to the garage, where a brand new Schwinn LeTour stood waiting for me (for which, by the way, my 15 year old brother had paid half).

Many years passed before I finally confessed to my mother about opening the present. However, I never, ever even considered peeking again.

In case you missed it....

2006-12-16T21:59:00.000-05:00

It would appear that not everyone realized there was a LINK in the Go Elf Yourself post from earlier today. If you missed the LINK, you missed the point, so click the LINK.

We will now rejoin regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.

Go Elf yourself!

2006-12-16T00:38:00.000-05:00

Really, it's the little things that make me happy. And it's the little things that make me laugh. You know, like elves....

Hello, Bunny!

2006-12-15T23:00:00.000-05:00

We came back!

When last we spoke, Stinkerbell and I were preparing to embark on our Chicago adventure, and what an adventure it was! We walked. We shopped. We played UNO (Stinkerbell cheats). We rode the train. We saw Happy Feet (Loved it!!). And, we ate really good, really thick, really big slices of pizza. Yum.

As part of the weekend-long sixth birthday celebration, The Aunties took Stinkerbell to Build-A-Bear, where she Built-A-Bunny instead. Super cute.

Fun was had by all.

Soooo excited....

2006-12-01T20:22:00.000-05:00

"Seven more days!!!!" Stinkerbell yelled at the top of her lungs at dinner, pounding her open hands on the table in time with her chant. "Are you so excited, Momma??"

The funny thing is, yes, I am so excited, but in a 38 year old way, rather than an almost six year old way.

Following family tradition, Stinkerbell and I are traveling to Chicago to visit her godparents next weekend, in honor of her sixth birthday. Bug and The Divine Miss M each had their turns, last year and the year before, respectively. (Yes, my kids each turned six in three consecutive years, but that's a whole separate story.)

Stinkerbell has been counting down the days for the past week. Before that, she was counting weeks, starting at about 8 weeks prior to the trip. Before that, she was complaining that it was never going to be her turn to go to Chicago.

Well, it's almost time. And she is psyched. Several times a day, she explodes with excitement. If she is standing, she jumps. If she is sitting, she pounds. If she is lying down, she kicks, all the while, updating the countdown in her biggest, loudest voice, in case you missed it an hour ago. Stinkerbell is literally bursting with enthusiasm.

Which makes me wonder—when do we lose that? When do we stop jumping up and down when we hear it's time to go to the library? When do we stop wahooing when we find out we're having breakfast for dinner? When do we stop galloping and dancing through the mall, oblivious to the people around us?

And, more importantly, why? Wouldn't life be so much more fun if we skipped through the grocery store instead? What's wrong with breaking out into song when we find out Grandma is coming over? When was the last time you jumped up and down and gave a big YAY!! (sporting events aside.)?

The Divine Miss M is dying to be a grownup. She can't wait to pay bills. (I kid you not.) She can't wait to do the laundry herself. (Swear.) She can't wait to go grocery shopping. What's interesting is, she is already far more grown up that many of the grownups I know. Unlike Stinkerbell, who is fully, proudly, and loudly almost six, and loving every minute of it.

So, next weekend, we will board the plane and make the journey to some much needed Stinkerbell and Momma time. No brother to fight with. No sister to compete with. Just me and my baby.

You can't see me, but I'm clapping.

What brings you here?

2006-11-28T13:00:00.000-05:00

Don't ask me why, but there is something wildly entertaining about knowing what keywords people typed into Google that had them land on my blog. Here is a list from the past seven days:

Some of these make perfect sense. For example, most of my friends likely think of me when they read "dancing for people with two left feet." On the other hand, I'm hoping that "elephants and donkeys grow big ears" does not conjure up images of yours truly.

While I do shop at WalMart with some frequency, I have no idea if the store actually has any unwritten policies. I'm sure the Googler was disappointed at not finding them here. Course, if they were here, the policies would no longer be unwritten.

I'm really not sure what to make of the person whose homework was eaten at JC Penney. Why was s/he doing homework at the mall? Why was the dog at Penneys? Did the teacher believe this new twist on an old lame excuse for incomplete homework?

As for all of the Googlers experiencing whooshing, thumping, pulsing, and scratching in their ears, call your doctor. You never know what they're going to find in there....

These are the things Thanksgiving is made from

2006-11-26T20:52:00.000-05:00

Hey. Remember me? Yeah, well, I was busy not cooking dinner, not shopping on Black Friday, and not decorating my Christmas tree. Fact is, I've been busy with a bunch of nothing.

My kids, on the other hand, have been busy with a bunch of something, and I thought I'd share.

Guest Blogger Number One: Bug, 7, whose spelling and punctuation in this second grade writing project has been preserved

I'm thankful for my dad because he watches football games with me. We sort baseball cards together. He pases the football around with me. He watches movies with me all the time. He teaches me how to play the drums at night sometimes. He plays sports with me. I'm thankful for my dad.

I'm thankful for my mom because in the summer she goes in the pool with me. When she has time we do arts and crafts. She kicks around the soccer ball with me and pitches to me. She teaches me how to cook and bake. She takes me to the movies. She makes pancakes on the weekends. She teaches me how to bake cakes. I love her very much this is why I'm thankful for her.

I'm thankful for my gradma because she rubs my back when I watch a movie. I like it when she does it because it's comfortable. She lets me stay over night at her house. If I'm sick she takes me to the docters. She plays Don't break the ice with me when ever I come over. She buys me winter PJs for me so I'll stay warm during the night. This is why I'm thankful for my grandma.

I'm thankful for my Papa because he watches Jets games with me. He takes me bowling at the Wonder Ball. He plays tag with me. He bounces me on the trampoline a lot. He passes the football around with me. He bought me a bike for my birthday.

I'm thankful for my sister because she plays twister with me. we bounce each other on the trampoline a lot. She teachs me tricks on the trapies like flips. She helps me on the computer when I need it. She watches TV with me. (Bug has two sisters and, when questioned, said he was talking about both of them.)

Guest Blogger Number Two: Stinkerbell, 5, and her artistic rendering of the essence of Thanksgiving

Kindergarten art project

Stinkerbell and Dad worked on this together,
but she assured me she didn't let Dad do much....

Guest Blogger Number Three: The Divine Miss M, 8, and her belated Halloween poem (belatedly posted, not belatedly written)

Halloween Night
By The Divine Miss M

Witche's Brew
Old Lady's Stew
Halloween Ghosts Passing Through
Halloween Night Filled With Fright
'Cause the Ghosts and Goblins Come Out at Midnight
Screams and Scares Come From Everywhere
I Think the Ghosts Had Their Share

Let's go to the movies

2006-11-17T12:04:00.000-05:00

After much urging and prompting from friends, family, and pesky pop-up ads, I finally took the plunge and signed up for a Netflix membership. Much of my motivation was to rent movies for the children, because, really, I'm not a big movie watcher.

Which is not to say I don't like movies. I just don't like bad movies. I don't even like mediocre movies, so much of my movie watching is either by accident or by recommendation. With another New England winter quickly approaching, this seems like a good time to compile a list of must-see movies.

Here's my list so far, based on the recommendations of others (you know who you are):

The School of Rock
Mystic River
13 Going on 30
Office Space
Manchurian Candidate
Yentl
Ladder 49
Castaway
The Longest Day
The Man Who Would Be King

I know almost nothing about any of these movies, other than someone liked them enough for me to add them to a list on my Palm Pilot. For those of you who don't know me well enough to know my taste in movies, I thought I'd give you a hint as to the range of movies I have enjoyed in the past.

In no particular order:

The Green Mile
Shawshank Redemption
Crash
No Way Out
Fried Green Tomatoes
A Perfect Murder
Silence of the Lambs
Miss Congeniality
A Beautiful Mind
Forest Gump

I like movies that make me think. I like movies that are clever. I like mysteries. I like comedy, but not slapstick. Action and adventure, but not of the Die Hard brand. While a couple of the titles on my list arguably fall into this category, I'm not a huge fan of "chick flicks."

So get to work, efriends! Make me a list. What's your favorite movie? How about your top five? I've got a Netflix Queue to fill, and I need help!

Dear Santa

2006-11-13T23:32:00.000-05:00

I just finished a project for work which required me to call local "celebrities" and ask them what's on their wish list for Christmas. Included on the list were things like peace on earth, good will to men, and prosperity for the local economy. Very few people offered up actual items they were interested in having for Christmas—like neckties or CDs or sweaters—which left me to wonder, do these people really not want anything for themselves for Christmas?

Naturally, the next stop on this train of thought was the place where I wonder, well, what do I want for Christmas? If money were no object and nothing were impossible, what would I want for Christmas? While, on the surface, this might seem like an easy question to answer, you might have more trouble than you think completing the task. (Keep in mind, you'll have to share your list with others.)

I thought it would be fun to write my own wish list and share it here. Only I got stuck. Because, really, I want for nothing. Which doesn't mean I have everything so much as it means that I appreciate what I have and, really, I have what I need. And then some.

I'm sure I could rattle off a list of books I'd like to read, but I have a number of unread books on my shelf that are first in line. If you've been following along, you likely know that I passed a law early in the year that no more books can come in until some go out. No books.

I'm sure I could come up with some gizmos and gadgets that would be fun, either accessories for my camera or a fancy new electronic something or other to make my life easier. But when you know the list will be scrutinized by others, suddenly there is pressure to come up with something more meaningful. Something important.

Like a cure for cancer. That would be nice. And Alzheimer's disease. And Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease. Okay, how about a cure for all disease, a panacea in its truest form. That's what I want for Christmas.

Or, if I can't have that, what about an end to hunger? That would be nice. An end to poverty and crime and illiteracy. Add those to the list.

Since I'm listing the impossible, I might as well go the distance. I wish I could spend a day with my grandmother. I miss her.

I wish Bug, who is seven, was taller than Stinkerbell, who is almost six. Not because it matters to me, but because it matters to Bug.

I wish I had more patience. I wish I had more time. I wish kids would walk faster when they cross the street in front of a car, instead of slower.

The more I think about it, the more I understand why people wish for world peace this time of year.

So, what's on your list?

The buck stops here

2006-10-31T09:08:00.000-05:00

Did you ever have a nosy neighbor? A neighbor who you are sure is watching your every move, listening to your conversations, and generally putting their nose where it doesn't belong?

Yeah. Me neither.

Or so I thought.

The other day, while chatting on the telephone with my mother about not much of anything, I just happened to glance out the window.

That's when I saw him, standing in the middle of my front yard, staring at me.

For a split second, I thought I was seeing things. I mean, the nerve, to not only prance right into my yard, but to stand there, staring at me through my window.

It didn't take me long to spring into action. I hung up the phone, grabbed my camera and began the pursuit. I needed evidence. By the time I made it to the front door, Mr. Nosy had made his way into the side yard and was approaching the yard next door. Sure he would head into what we call the way-back*, I made my way along the path.

As I fumbled with the lens cap, Mr. Nosy appeared right in front of me.

Sadly, in my haste, I didn't get the focus quite right....

The good news is, Mr. Nosy stayed around long enough for me to try again.... (click the photo for a larger view)

*a loosely wooded area of our yard, behind the grassy knoll**
**we have no knoll

Torn between two blogs

2006-10-26T09:29:00.000-04:00

Sometimes a story comes along in my life that begs to be blogged. And sometimes I am torn between two blogs. On the one hand, Ramblings is my creative outlet, the place where I can speak freely and count on the occasional comment from passersby. On the other hand, writing for Mental Snacks is part of my real job, and sometimes I just need a topic.

This week I found myself in just such a quandary. I had a story to tell, one I know you would enjoy. But, I posted it to Snacks instead. It's just a quick click away, so I'm hoping you'll make the trip. Just find a blue word, and CLICK.

A CRIME WAVE IN THE SUBURBS

Most things make more sense in retrospect. Quarters found, nickels given away, and dimes dropped into the piggy bank all seem like the business of five year olds at first glance. But, under more careful scrutiny, a sinister plot is revealed.

Or, my kid is a crook.

Come on. You know you want to click....

Things that go thump in the night

2006-10-18T22:51:00.000-04:00

One night last week, as I sat on my bed, typing away on my laptop, I heard a noise. It wasn't a loud noise, but more of a distant thumping sound. Hubby was out, the kids were sleeping, and Zoey was on the bed with me, all of which made the sound that much more mysterious. After a bit of poking around, I was unable to locate the source of the thumping, so I went back to my work.

A little while later, the scene repeated itself, and it took me a full day and a half of on again off again hunting to identify the source of this occasional sound: it was my heart. My heart was beating in my ear. Now, before you call the men in the proverbial white coats, let me assure you, I am not crazy. I even went so far as to check my pulse to see if it was keeping the beat with the ear noise. It was.

As any self-respecting Google geek would, I promptly began searching for some kind of explanation for this phenomenon. (Back in the old days, people called doctors when they had questions about their health. Imagine!) A surprisingly lengthy list of results offered numerous possible causes for having one's heart stuck in her ear. Muscle spasms, abnormalities in the blood vessels, fever, and ear infection, can all cause noise in one's head, or tinnitus, as the medical professionals prefer to call it. None of these things seemed likely to be the cause in my expertish opinion, so I tried to ignore it. Only I couldn't.

Several days passed before I entertained thoughts of calling the doctor. But, what would I say? I can hear my heart beating? I felt perfectly fine, so, in the grand scheme of things, this seemed like more of a nuisance than a condition requiring treatment.

As fate would have it, yesterday, Stinkerbell and Bug had a routine appointment with their ear specialist. I mentioned to the ear doctor that I've been hearing my heart beating in my ear. She asked if I had a cold or was congested. No on both counts. She asked if I had any pain. Another no. She then became visibly concerned, and said that I should have this checked out right away, as it could be a sign of a blockage in my carotid artery.

I kid you not. I was in a state of disbelief. I am a perfectly healthy 38 year old, an my what is blocked??

We weren't out of the parking lot yet and I was on the phone to my doctor's office, who, in turn, told me to go to Urgent Care right away. Right away meant this morning, since The Divine Miss M has dance class from 6:15 to 7:45 on Tuesday nights, and Urgent Care closes at 8:00 p.m.

As the school bus took my children away this morning, I made my way over to the medical practice walk-in known as Urgent Care, where the doctor asked me a series of questions about my reported ear noise.

"Are you having any trouble hearing?" she asked.

Nope.

"Any history of ear infections?"

Last January. And then there was that time during the summer when I heard a sort of scratchy whooshing sound in my ear in the middle of the night, which I think was from the swimming pool. But it went away.

"What about on the phone? Do you prefer one ear over the other?"

Yes, but I think there's something wrong with my phone.

"Ah, I see."

The doctor put the stethoscope to my neck to listen to my carotid arteries. She then took her earoscope, and peered into my ears.

"Huh," she said. "I'll be right back."

And right back she came, armed with a long hose and a bucket with a notch cut out for my ear.

"You have a foreign object in your ear," she said.

What???? I am 38 years old! I don't put foreign objects in my ears! What the heck is in my ear?

"We're going to flush it out and see."

As she power washed my eardrum with a stream of warm water, out came the object. Turns out, I had a tick in my ear, specifically on my ear drum, which was making my telephone not work as well on my left ear, because Mr. Tickbug was preventing my eardrum from vibrating normally.

This woman in a white coat (heh heh) proceeded to ramble on about air vibrations vs. bone vibrations, and how, because I couldn't hear out of my left ear, I was instead hearing the noise in my head.

But, really, all I could think about was this creepy critter crawling into my ear canal whilst I slept. I suddenly realized that the scratchy whooshing sound I'd heard three or four months ago was very likely the tick, unpacking his suitcase.

The good news is, the kids were wildly impressed when I told them the story and showed them Mr. Tickbug, sealed between two pieces of clear tape. Blech.

Saturday in SmallTown

2006-10-15T21:59:00.000-04:00

When my mother suggested we check out an estate sale in SmallTown, my feelings were mixed. Treasure hunting is always fun, but so is sleeping in on Saturday. Because she was sure we would miss something if we didn't get there early enough, we agreed to meet at 7:30 a.m., a full thirty minutes (of sleep) before the sale was scheduled to begin.

The estate was that of a well known local photographer who died in 1988, and his partner, an artist whose deteriorating health had prompted his recent relocation to a nursing home. Given my interest in photography and my mother's interest in art, getting up at 6:30 in the blessed a.m. almost seemed worth it.

We both pulled up in front of the house right on time and waited for signs of activity. About ten minutes later, a woman came out of the house across the street with a chair from a patio set, tipping us off that we had been watching the wrong house. Just then, my other father* pulled up, and the three of us trotted off toward the sale.

This is a house that I have passed more times than I can count. It is located one house from the corner of a major road in SmallTown. I have driven past it. I have walked past it. I have ridden past it on my bicycle. And each time I've gone by, I've wondered what this house looks like on the inside. It is an unusual house, whose roof is more of a square than a triangle, and whose foundation is more of an L-shape than a square. The décor on the exterior is dated, and, upon entering the house for the first and last time, I discovered that the interior was of the same, long-gone era.

While my mother commented repeatedly about the potential of this house and how beautiful it could be "if you went right through it," my thoughts were more on how much it would cost to knock it down. To me, the layout is wacky and the style is so outdated that it would be nearly impossible to update it.

But, we were not there to buy the house. No, we were in search of treasures. Anyone who knows me knows that yard-saling is not a sport I particularly enjoy. I don't save my own junk, and rarely do I want the junk of others. However, I have grown fond of ebay, and this seemed like an opportunity to acquire some items to sell to people who enjoy collecting the junk of others.

You can tell a lot about people by what is in their house. Keeping in mind that the family must have removed whatever memorabilia they valued, there were still many clues left behind. Countless cookbooks and a kitchen well stocked with old culinary tools spoke of countless meals served here over the years. Stacks of record albums and 45s were scattered throughout the house, revealing a penchant for music. Up a spiral staircase were a couple of bedrooms and an artist's studio, where my mother found a number of odds and ends.

In the basement, the tools of a professional photographer were abandoned, collecting dust for many years. Seeing all of the photographic gizmos and gadgets made me realize how little I really know about the early days of this craft. Old folding cameras with bellows intact, a myriad of flash and lens options and accessories, countless empty album pages with oval cut-outs, and empty wooden frames were scattered about in one of the basement rooms. Pile after pile of old photographs depicted various strangers in various stages of life. I wondered if any of the photos' subjects would discover their own images in this estate sale.

Across the way was an abandoned darkroom, where developing trays were stacked up on the shelf next to an enlarger. Dark glass bottles wore hand-written labels indicating their contents—ingredients which, no doubt, played some integral role in bringing film to life as photographs.

I'm not sure when the shift began, but there was most definitely a shift. What started out as an adventure in treasure hunting ended up leaving me feeling like I was reading someone's diary. The realization that the lives of the two people who lived in this house all came down to an estate sale, the day before the dumpster arrives, left me feeling sad.

We go through life, collecting stuff. Some of it is valuable. Some of it is crap. And most of it, no matter how important we think it is right now, most of it will be the litter we leave behind, litter for our loved ones to sift through, in search of something to hold on to. The rest will be advertised in the Saturday classifieds, and offered up to strangers who enjoy collecting the junk of others.

*Not to be confused with my father, who is unlikely to go antiquing with my mother.

38 things you may or may not know about me

2006-10-11T22:27:00.000-04:00

1. Music gives me goose bumps.

2. I cried at the Billy Joel/Elton John concert—before they took the stage.

3. I am dance-challenged.

4. Diet Coke is my water.

5. I chew gum. A lot. Trident blue.

6. I wear my grandmother's wedding band on my right hand.

7. My grandfather thinks I'm brilliant.

8. I thoroughly enjoyed Homer's Odyssey.

9. Other favorite books include Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway, Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman

10. I loved the study of Latin. And Spanish. And Portuguese.

11. When I was 16, I vowed to kill myself at 50, to avoid becoming a burden to society.

12. When I was 16, I charted my success by how long I could abstain from eating.

13. I am compulsive. I am obsessive. I am neurotic. I am well acquainted with my flaws.

14. I have pushed many envelopes.

15. I am taller than all of my friends and some of their husbands.

16. At 6, my oldest daughter expressed envy at my having two fathers.

17. It took me nine years to earn my Bachelor's Degree.

18. My brother helped me pay for college.

19. All three of my children have brown eyes. Mine are bluish green.

20. My father is tall.

21. My mother used to be half an inch taller than I am.

22. My other father is tall.

23. My older brother is the tallest.

24. I hate when fun happens without me.

25. I teach people to decorate cakes.

26. I tried to teach myself to play the piano.

27. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Winey, was promoted to fifth grade with my class.

28. Mushrooms gross me out.

29. When I bought my first Palm Pilot, some of my friends laughed at me, because, at the time, I was "just a mommy."

30. Four seasons of American Idol went by before I signed on.

31. Only one of my grandparents was born in the United States.

32. Nemo dat qua non habet.

33. Photography is my favorite craft.

34. I am a pathetic pet owner.

35. It took me 38 years to grow my bangs out.

36. Chocolate covered pretzels. Yum yum.

37. Every night I say that I should go to bed early, and every night I stay up late.

38. I love to blog.

Tuesday has moved

2006-10-10T16:42:00.000-04:00

In my occasional quest to improve Ramblings, I decided to reposition the Tuesday Updates for those among you who are following the progress of my weight loss team. However, in my eagerness to tidy up the place (and take the focus off of fat reduction), I tucked the Tuesday Updates over there on the right without telling anyone. As you can imagine, this earned me a couple of phone calls and a few emails from people, wondering if I have fallen off of and been run over by the fatty wagon. I have not. Nor have my team members. In face, to date, we are down a whopping 58 pounds!

Thanks for the cheers and continued support.

More later--

Me and my two left feet

2006-10-06T00:08:00.000-04:00

There are certain things in life that I simply cannot do.

I cannot do a cartwheel.

I cannot speak French.

~~I cannot play the guitar~~

I cannot dance.

Intellectually, I understand all of the above.

I have watched Stinkerbell and The Divine Miss M learn, step by step, the ins and outs of cartwheeling. I have spotted them, corrected their technique, and helped them learn to do something I have never done.

Having studied Spanish for a eight years or so, I understand that, in France, people speak French. I understand that verbs are conjugated and nouns have feminine or masculine articles. But I have no idea how to speak French.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to play an instrument, really play an instrument. I have seen people do it, so I know it is possible. As a child, I wanted to play the violin, the flute, the piano. I plucked around with the guitar as a teenager, but I never had the opportunity to take lessons. (Yeah, scratch that one….)

Then there's dancing. On the surface, it seems pretty straightforward. I love music. I have feet. I can count. What's the big deal? The big deal is, I just don't have it. I don't have that certain something that makes people move instinctively when the music starts. Sure, I tap my toe and nod my head in time with the music. But it never quite makes it to the center of my being—that's the "it" I don't have. People who can really dance, dance with far more than their feet. The rhythm comes from far within. They don't hear it. They feel it. And their bodies follow along.

I get it. I just don't get it.

p.s. I've been watching Dancing with the Stars. If you've been around long enough to have read this, you know how involved I can get….

The profile

2006-10-05T17:26:00.000-04:00

Talk about much ado about nothing....

After much procrastination and a couple of failed attempts, I sat down this afternoon and wrote my profile, deadline looming. Since many of you shared your profiles, I thought I would share mine. Keep in mind this is for professional purposes, and I reserve the right to resubmit a profile at a sooner date, one that more accurately reflects who I am.

Tyra Pacheco has been writing for The Standard-Times for the past four years. Focusing primarily on human interest stories and feature writing, her work appears throughout the paper and in supplemental sections. Ms. Pacheco is also a blogger on SouthCoastToday.com’s Mental Snacks. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts with a Bachelor of Arts in English, Ms. Pacheco lives in SmallTown with her husband and three children.

Profiling, by Myself

2006-09-28T10:46:00.000-04:00

After landing a new assignment at work, I was asked to write a profile of myself, one that will be used to introduce me to others. A profile. Huh. Yeah. Sounds easy, doesn't it? After all, who knows me better than I do? Strangely, that seems to make me less qualified for the job.

I have heard it said that much is revealed by how a person introduces herself, particularly where and when her introduction begins.

"My name is Betty and I grew up in New York."
"My name is Joan and I graduated from Smalltown High School."
"My name is Sally and I am the mother of three."

But, are any of those things who we really are? And, when someone asks you to introduce yourself, do they really want to know who you are? Or are they really asking you what you have done?

"My name is Meredith and I am an accountant."
"My name is Sheila and I am a landscape architect."
"My name is Janice and I was the president of my class."

I teach cake decorating classes for the local community learning network, and I always do the dreaded introduce-yourself-and-tell-us-why-you-are-here exercise on the first night of class. Most of the time, the women look around, look down, or try to make themselves invisible to avoid being the first to speak.

Part of the struggle for women, I think, is that we are reluctant to sound like we are bragging. Men brag. Women compliment. Even if it were true, Dawn would not say, "I am an attractive thirty three year old woman with a good sense of humor. I am a great cook, and the best amateur photographer this side of the Mississippi. Oh, and I was blessed with my grandmother's metabolism, which helps me stay fit."

Yeah. No. That's not what people say.

So, blogfriends, let's go around the virtual table and introduce ourselves. Tell us a little bit about yourself (real names optional) and why you are here. Who knows? Maybe you will inspire me to write my own profile.

When I grow up

2006-09-25T16:27:00.000-04:00

I was in study hall when a guidance office runner came in with one of 186 notes that would be handed out within a few weeks. My guidance counselor had summoned me to the third floor of the historic high school building.

As I made my way up the marble stairs in my tan suede tassled bucks, I began rehearsing my response to the big question: "What are your plans for the future, Tyra?"

When I look back through 38 year old eyes, I realize how ridiculous that question is for a 17 year old. But at the time, it was a crucial decision, one that would help determine which college to attend, which course of study to choose. Like most kids, I had dreamed of being many things, a psychologist, a pharmacist, a comedian, an actress.

In my last two years of high school, at a time when not much else interested me, I discovered a love for writing. Whether it was a term paper, a short story, or a poem detailing the heartbreak and tragedy of adolescence, I was forever writing.

So, as I sat in that old wooden chair across from the white haired guidance counselor who would help me chart my course, I said, with all the confidence of a teenager with life's opportunities ahead of her, "I want to be a writer."

There are a handful of moments in time, moments that define us, moments that forever change how we feel about ourselves and our place in the world. They are not all dramatic. They are not all long and drawn out. Most of them are simply brief moments in time, when someone says or does something, often with no malintent or even a second thought, something that undermines the very fabric of our beings.

Mr. Guidance leaned back in his chair, and he laughed. With one hand behind his head, the other straightening his kelly green tie, he said, "That's cute, but how are you going to make a living?"

That was 22 years ago. The following year, I applied to the one college I could afford, where I would major in management. I hated most of my classes, but I went through the motions. I worked full time and went to school full time for three semesters before I dropped out.

A series of events and a couple of years later, I returned to school part time. I changed my major to psychology for a minute, and then to English, with a concentration in writing and communication (yes, that's what they actually called it).

There are a good many stories that fill the gap between then and now, and I'll save those for another time.

This morning, while checking one of my favorite blogs, I read that Kristy received her first "real and true rejection letter from a literary agent." Strangely, I was envious. It's not every day people envy the rejection of others. However, her rejection letter was made possible only by her attempt to get published.

In spite of my work as a freelance writer for a newspaper, I still feel like I have not been published. I still feel like I have stories to tell (boy, do I have stories to tell) (tee hee), but I have not figured out where to start. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the laughter of Mr. Guidance still rings in my ears. That laughter, now more commonly known as self doubt, stands in the way, in a long line of excuses for not starting.

I suppose this is the part where I should make some kind of declaration. But I won't. Not yet.

First impressions, last impressions

2006-09-21T22:56:00.000-04:00

I was driving home from the gym this morning, minding my own business, when a black SUV darted out in front of me. Since I was on a main thoroughfare and he was clearly going through a stop sign, I beeped the horn. Much to my surprise, a man leaned out of the back seat window and screamed, "Control your f***ing temper!"

Up until that point, my temper was, in fact, nicely controlled. I was merely trying to alert this car to the fact that it had wandered onto a main road with seemingly no concern for the cars with the right of way. Oh, and, I didn't want him to hit me.

As the man hanging out of the back window threw me a finger, the front passenger window rolled down to reveal another angry face, also yelling expletives at me. As I held my hands up and said, "What is wrong with you people?" the man in the front seat jammed an orange sign out the window and offered up some more expletives.

Turns out, it was a funeral procession.

Before you judge me, and I suspect you are judging me, let me just point out that the street from which this SUV darted has a restaurant on the corner and the hearse was three cars back. The SUV was the first car in line, and, to someone driving home from the gym, it was a clear case of running a stop sign. Only it wasn't. It was a car full of mourners, and, to them, I was some dumb chick who didn't know enough to let a funeral procession pass. Only I couldn't see the funeral behind the restaurant.

I'm not going to mention the part about exchanging "pleasantries" with the verbal assaulters, because then it might look like I was insensitive to the fact that someone in their lives died. I'm really sorry about that. Death has also touched my life and it sucks. However, if you are the first one in the funeral procession, and you are proceeding across a street—against a stop sign—where cars typically drive 40 to 50 miles per hour, don't you have some level of responsibility to make sure that oncoming cars are aware that there is a funeral procession?

Right or wrong, for the rest of time, that family will forever remember the dumb blonde who nearly collided with them on their way to bury a dearly departed family member.

Sigh.

Tuesday Number Seven

2006-09-19T21:14:00.000-04:00

I get by with a little help from my friends....

Another Tuesday, another update. People talk about slowdowns and plateaus in dieting, and I am here to tell you, they suck. But, they suck less when the entire team is slowing down together. It helps to know that it's nothing I am doing wrong, since we are all in the same boat. The first few weeks offered rapid results, however our numbers are much more conservative, and, really, more realistic.

With no further ado:

Mrs. Pal is down 1 pound, for a total of 16
Mrs. Friend maintained her total loss of 14
Mrs. Me is down 1.5 pounds, for a total of 15.5
Team total: 45.5 pounds

Goooooooooooooooooo team!!!!

The magic of Stinkerbell

2006-09-14T21:25:00.000-04:00

The first day of kindergarten

As Stinkerbell joined the ranks of the elementary kids a couple of weeks ago, there was much discussion about who was going to sit with her on the bus. When Bug joined The Divine Miss M on the bus two years ago, she told everyone he was her cousin, so the chances of her owning up to a kid sister were slim. Being seen with a kindergartener could ruin a third grader's social life.

As for Bug, he wanted no part of it. Stinkerbell and Bug are about as close as siblings can be, but that's the problem. Bug was petrified that she would call him Buggy or, worse, try to kiss him on the bus. That would be the ultimate humiliation for a second grade boy.

So, for several days, there was begging, pleading, negotiating, and threatening. I tried everything. Somehow, Stinkerbell worked a deal herself with Bug, and he (sort of) agreed to sit with her. But just for the first day. And only on the way to school.

When we arrived at the bus stop, I thought Stinkerbell would explode, she was so excited. Miss M and Bug had started school two days earlier, so, for them, the novelty had already worn off. Stinkerbell pranced around with her pink backpack, keeping an eye out for the bus she had been looking forward to riding for years.

Finally, the yellow chariot arrived, and the princess boarded the bus, with Bug glued to her side.

I'm not sure what transpired on the ride to school, but at the end of the day, Bug not only refused to sit with her, he stuck his tongue out at her and sat in front of her instead, leaving his five year old sister to fend for herself on her first ride home.

Before Stinkerbell had a chance to protest, the unthinkable happened. The Divine Miss M swooped in and sat with her sister. Not only did Miss M sit with Stinkerbell, she defended her against Bully Boy, who was calling her names.

After school, Bug paid for his crime. Stinkerbell refused to play with him or even talk to him. I was tempted to dole out some kind of punishment for Bug's crime, but his sister seemed to be handling it pretty well on her own.

The second day of kindergarten

So, that was all on Friday. After the long, Labor Day weekend, we all overslept on Tuesday and scrambled around to get out the door on time. As I finished getting dressed, I yelled to the kids to get their shoes on.

I grabbed my keys and headed for the door.

"Stinkerbell, you look very nice today," Bug said.

"Yes, you do," said Miss M. "I love your new backpack."

"Come on guys, time to go," I said.

"I hope you have a nice day today," said Bug.

Huh, I thought to myself. This is a nice change of pace.

"I'll bet you're going to make a lot of new friends today," said Miss M.

"And, you have the nicest teacher," said Bug.

This continued all the way to the bus stop. As the kids spilled out of the car, Miss M started to say something, and Stinkerbell held up her hand. "Wait, it's Bug's turn." Then, turning to Bug, "Go ahead, Bug."

Bug looked at the ground, then said, "You look nice today."

"Now you, Miss M," Stinkerbell said.

Needless to say, curiosity was killing me. "What are you guys doing?"

"Well," Stinkerbell began, "Bug and Miss M both want to sit with me on the bus, so I told them that we could have a contest. Whoever bees the nicest to me gets to sit with me today."

I just don't know how she does it.

Tuesday Number Six

2006-09-12T22:51:00.000-04:00

With a 43 pound team total to date, I have no right to be disappointed. Sadly, I am. I know, I know, it's a journey, it takes time. But still. One lousy pound this week is disappointing. I probably should have seen it coming, as my progress to date has been high speed. Anything worth having takes time, right?

However, I am wildly impressed with my teammates this week--

Mrs. Pal is down 2.5 this week, for a total of 15 pounds lost
Mrs. Friend is down 3 pounds, for a total of 14
Mrs. Me, down 1, for a total of 14

Goooooooooo team!!

(If you are new here, click here for more on the team effort.)

Ignorance was bliss

2006-09-11T00:02:00.000-04:00

It was a day like any other. I was shopping at the Cape Cod Outlet Mall with my mother, Bug, and Stinkerbell. The Divine Miss M was at preschool for the morning, while we hunted for bargains.

As we made our way down the hall toward the Carter's outlet, a television in the hallway showed images of smoke coming from the World Trade Center. We stopped for a moment, along with a small group of other shoppers. As Katie Couric and Matt Lauer spoke of jet fuel and potential lives lost, I glanced at my watch to see how much time I had to shop for clearance items at the Osh Gosh outlet. It was about 9:30 a.m.

Completely unaware of the gravity of the situation, I poked through racks of shorts and onesies while my mother manned the double stroller in the hallway. Then, I darted over to the Carter's outlet, where, instead of music, the overhead speakers were spewing details of the drama that was unfolding across the northeast. I asked the woman behind the counter what was happening, and she said two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Shopping was no longer a priority. I returned to the hallway television, where the crowd was growing. Images of the Pentagon in flames confused me. When had the Pentagon ever been on fire, I wondered. I assumed that they must be making some kind of comparison between the World Trade Center fire and what I assumed was old footage at the Pentagon. It was all very hard to piece together, even for those who had seen the breaking news from the start.

As I stood in the outlet mall, with my two year old Bug and nine month old Stinkerbell, there was a heaviness in my heart that my generation had not yet experienced. As the first tower collapsed on live television, the world as I had known it was forever changed.

Details emerged about flights out of Boston, the city from which one of my closest friends was to depart. Cell phones were useless as millions of people frantically searched for loved ones. I would later learn that my friend was fine. Her flight was diverted and she would drive more than 10 hours home.

My mother and I abandoned our shopping trip. We listened to news radio for the 40 minute ride to preschool, where many parents were picking up their children early. A four hour drive from New York City, we were in no immediate danger, a fact nobody at that point was willing to trust. Over the next few weeks, schools, hospitals, businesses, shopping malls, and sports arenas would begin drafting emergency procedures for terror attacks.

“If we are given sufficient time to evacuate, we will remain at the school as long as possible without jeopardizing the safety of the children,” a memo from preschool stated. “YOU MUST COME TO GET YOUR CHILD AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. If you fail to arrive in time, your child will be taken to a staff member’s home, the location to be posted on the school door.”

That sense of immediate danger has passed. But as airport security gets increasingly tighter, passengers grow increasingly more anxious, and unlike five years ago when air traffic controllers were in disbelief and denial that American Airlines Flight 11 was in fact hijacked, nowadays a flight from London is escorted by fighter jets when a claustrophobic grandmother has an anxiety attack.

Five years plus one week ago, our heads were happily buried in the sand. Ignorance was bliss.

Tuesday Number Five

2006-09-05T10:51:00.000-04:00

You know, when you have 13 muffins, or 13 donuts, or 13 dinner rolls, people sometimes call it a baker's dozen. But, when you are talking about 13 POUNDS, well, that's far more than 13 baked goods. Thirteen pounds is the equivalent of a 12 pack, plus 4 cans of Diet Coke. (Yes, I weighed it.) And, 13 pounds is also what I am now MISSING.

Team results:
Mrs. Pal lost 2.5 pounds this week, for a total of 12.5.
Mrs. Friend lost 3.5 pounds, for a total of 11.
Mrs. Me, as I mentioned, down 2.5 for a total of 13, bringing the
Team Total to 36.5 pounds!!

Wahooooo!!!!

(If you are new here, click here for more on the team effort.)

Kids are mean

2006-09-02T19:42:00.000-04:00

Have you ever been shopping, in the mall, or the grocery store, and did you ever see one of those kids? You know the type, they lurk behind their mothers, hide inside the clothing racks, and glare at other shoppers. Then, when another, unsuspecting child walks by, they shove their fresh little tongues out between their fresh little lips, delivering the ultimate childhood insult.

Had you been shopping with me this afternoon, along with Stinkerbell and The Divine Miss M, that's just what you would have seen. Only problem was, Stinkerbell was the perpetrator. Seemingly unprovoked, my five year old stuck her tongue out and wagged her fresh little fanny at a cute little girl whose only crime appeared to be having long, curly hair.

As Mother Fate would have it, I happened to turn and look at Stinkerbell, just as she launched her attack. There was no sense in denying the obvious, though she gave it a momentary, feeble try.

Mortified, I stepped out of line, took Stinkerbell by the hand, and marched her over to the little girl, who, at this point, was hiding behind her mother. I smiled politely at the mother and asked the little girl if my daughter had stuck her tongue out. The girl nodded and hid.

While I demanded that Stinkerbell apologize for her transgression, the other mother gave me that I-know-how-you-feel wink as she rubbed her daughter's back.

Kids.

Drum roll please!!

2006-08-29T09:52:00.000-04:00

The results are in and the team total is 28 pounds!!!

Mrs. Pal lost 4 pounds this week (for a total of 10), Mrs. Friend, whose birthday it was last weekend, gained 2 pounds (for a total loss of 7.5), and Mrs. Me lost 2 pounds (for a total of 10.5). Mrs. Friend has assured me that she is back on track today, and we are cheering her on! The journey we are on is a long and winding road. I'm sure we will all have our ups and downs along the way.

Goooooooooo team!!!

Out of the mouths of babes--big ones and little ones

2006-08-25T18:43:00.000-04:00

I took five year old Stinkerbell and seven year old Bug to Marshall's today to do some last minute school shopping. A quick search through the racks revealed too few treasures, but we were able to find a cute pair of sneakers for Stinkerbell.

Thrilled with her new shoes, Stinkerbell proudly stood in line, waiting for her turn to step up to the register. As the customer in front of us waited for her change, the teenager behind the counter closed the cash drawer prematurely. Immediately realizing his mistake, he blurted out a rather loud, "Shit!"

As I waited for one of the kids to notice this indiscretion, the young man covered his acne scarred face with two hands and said, "Oh no, I swore," to the clerk next to him. I did my best to distract the kids, hoping I could avoid defining the boy's utterance.

One awkward moment led to another when Stinkerbell turned to Bug and said with the volume of a five year old, "That guy has a lot of bug bites on his face."

I quickly shushed Stinkerbell, ushering her out the door for the don't-point-out-the-flaws-in-others speech. Without prompting, Stinkerbell promised to apologize "the next time I see that guy."

As I drove away, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself at how, sometimes, life balances itself out.

Yes. I know. I'm mean.

A day late, and 22 pounds short

2006-08-23T11:21:00.001-04:00

Not for lack of interest, but for lack of communication, I was unable to post the team results yesterday. So, for those of you following along, the total team weight loss is 22 pounds. Mrs. Friend lost 3.5 pounds this week (for a total of 9.5), Mrs. Pal had no loss or gain (for a total of 4), and Mrs. Me lost 2.5 pounds (for a total of 8.5).

Gooooooooooo team!!!

Ewwwww!!! Boil my hands! Boil my hands!

2006-08-21T22:20:00.000-04:00

Some people are just disgusting.

On my return flight from Chicago this afternoon, I was able to secure a window seat aboard the Southwest jet to Providence. When I am traveling alone, I prefer to huddle in the corner and watch the ground go by, and, since I have a policy against peeing in flight, I will not need to disturb whatever neighbors I may end up sitting with by climbing over them to make a potty run. The flight was nearly full, and it didn't take long for the two other seats in my row to fill up. Both the aisle and center seat next to mine were filled with women in their late twenties, neither of whom seemed to know the other.

As soon as the flight attendants finished their speech about seatbelts and emergency exits, the girl next to me promptly reclined her seat, in defiance of the aforementioned policy requiring seats to be in an upright position during take off. I should have known right then that this rule-breaker was going to be trouble.

Shortly after take-off, She-Who-Would-Recline began to nod off. This is not generally a problem for me, but people do not generally use my shoulder for a head rest. Not even people I know. A few shrugs later, She stirred and turned the other way. For the next hour or so, I finished reading James Patterson's 4th of July, which is the fourth in a series* I highly recommend. Once the mystery was solved, I closed my book and took out my laptop to get a jump on this week's work.

That's when I noticed Nancy Nosepicker, in up to her first knuckle. I'm not talking about a discreet removal of a mysterious itching compound. I'm talking about a full blown excavation, with repeated trips into the nasal tunnel, clearly in pursuit of something I was deathly afraid I might eventually see. After each attempt, she carefully inspected the tip of her finger before returning to the dig.

Well, if that's not bad enough, once she completed phase one of her orificial cleaning, she moved on to phase two: the ear canal. This time, she called in the pinky, who dutifully worked over and over and over and over to try and clear a path. Again, each trip into the tunnel was followed by a careful inspection. Both ears, people, both ears.

Next on the list of ways to torture me during my two hour flight was to clean up after Mr. Sandman. By now, I was nearly plastered to the window, trying to scoot away from this woman in these very tight quarters. Just when I thought she could not gross me out any more, she started biting her nails. The same nails that had so diligently dug deep into the disgusting depths of her head.

I went to great lengths to make sure this woman never actually touched me, but I could not shake the feeling that, if I touched anything in the cabin of the aircraft or in the airport on the way out for that matter, I would surely pick up a microscopic particle of her facial waste.

Blech.

*1st to Die, 2nd Chance, 3rd Degree, 4th of July, and 5th Horseman are murder mysteries set in San Francisco, all with strong, female main characters.

A sign of things to come

2006-08-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

Nearly seven years ago, I wrote the following recap of the day's events. Miss M was 19 months old at the time, and Bug was four months.

November 27, 1999

Last night, after dinner, The Divine Miss M was playing in the living room. Bug was sitting in his swing, minding his own business, as usual. For reasons I cannot explain, Miss M walked up behind Bug and smacked him right on the head! I was horrified!

I flew out of my seat and grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the time out chair. The whole time I was chewing her out. "We don't hit in this family! That's not nice! Look--you made Bug cry! Bug loves you, why would you do that? Blah, blah, blah..." I planted her sorry butt in the timeout chair, where she proceeded to cry and kick the wall. After a couple of minutes, I went through the usual schpeel with her:

"Miss M, why are you sitting there?"
"Sit the time out chair," she replied.
"What did you do?"
"Hit Bug." Good, she gets the point.
"Is that nice, to hit Bug?"
"Yeah," she answered. Uh-oh, I think. But then I realize that this was only day two of "yeah" being in her vocabulary. Perhaps that's not what she meant.
"It's not nice to hit Bug," I reminded her.
"Not nice!" she chimed in.
"Miss M, I want you to say, 'No hitting.'"
"No hitting."
"Say, 'I love Bug.'"
"I yuv Bug."
"You go give bug a kiss and say you're sorry."
"Get up?" she asked.
"Yes. Go say your sorry to Bug."

At this point, she got out of her time out chair. As she was walking past me, she turned her face to me and said, "Hit Bug again!" I thought I would just die! I have to say, I'm pretty good when it comes to not laughing at her when she's being naughty. But this time, I ran from the room, because I was laughing tears! When I had gathered myself up, I came back and said to Hubby, "We are in BIG trouble!"

This was neither the first nor the last time I ran from the room to conceal my laughter. This was also neither the first nor the last time I uttered the words, "We are in big trouble...."

The new rule

2006-08-20T00:03:00.000-04:00

There's something funny about losing weight. In my mind, I am well on my way to my goal. In reality, almost three weeks in, I am not.

My goal is to lose approximately 60 pounds. To date, I have officially lost six pounds, though I suspect the truth is more like eight. (Weigh-in day is Tuesday.) What's funny is, having made the mental shift toward more rational eating, I am repeatedly surprised when I catch my look in the mirror. You know, that flat, shiny, teller of truths.

Really, when you need to lose 60 and you have only lost six or eight, chances are, the mirror won't notice. No more mirrors. They are bad for morale.

A letter to The Divine Miss M

2006-08-19T17:10:00.000-04:00

In the middle of my run-away-to-remember-who-Tyra-is weekend in Chicago (because, before I was Mommy, I was Tyra), I thought I would do some reorganizing of the files on my laptop. Life often works in mysterious ways, as I came across some things I haven't read in years.

7/27/99

Dear Miss M,

In three days, you will be a big sister. I am filled with more emotion than I can probably express in words. A part of me is sad that our time alone is over. I have spent a lot of time wondering how you are going to react to the baby. Whenever we go out, you love to go baby hunting. You always want to say hi to the babies and blow them a kiss. For a couple of months now, you’ve been rubbing my belly and saying, “Baby,” but I really don’t think you understand. You will be exactly 15 months old when your little brother is born.

As I mentally prepare for another baby to enter our lives, I can’t help but remember all of the little adorable things you did as a newborn. The first time I held you in my arms, you made this cute little snorty sound before you began to cry. Several months went by before you stopped making that noise. I remember getting up in the middle of the night to feed you; halfway through your feeding, I would sit you up on my lap, supporting your little face in my hand with a cloth diaper and rubbing your back. Every night you would fall asleep in that position, with your cheeks all mushed up and a little pout on your lips.

You were a very happy baby. Except from around 4:00 to exactly 7:00 every night. We called it the suppertime blues. Once you started crying, we knew you would continue until the clock struck seven. It was almost as though you could tell time. To quiet you down, we would play Disney music and dance around the living room with you. Sometimes that worked. One night, when you were about six weeks old, I read “Green Eggs and Ham” to you. You were mesmerized. (If I try to read that to you now, you say, “All done!” and close the book.)

Today is Tuesday. On Friday, you will have a baby brother. I don’t know why I expect you to understand that, when I can hardly grasp the concept. Every mother I know tells me that each child fills your heart and there’s always room for more. The thought of having that much love for another child makes me very happy. You are a happy child and I hope you will love (and like) the baby. Your doctor told me that you are a bit young to feel jealous. However, you are very smart for your age and I’m afraid you’ll prove them wrong!

For the last couple of weeks, you’ve been waking up very early, between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning. You used to wake up happy. Lately, you wake up screaming, “Mommy! Mommy!” You’ve been very crabby and very clingy. I feel sorry for Daddy, because all you want is me. (I also feel sorry for me, because sometimes a mommy just needs a break!) It makes me wonder if you sense that something is changing, even if you can’t grasp what’s actually happening. We’ve put another crib in your room. And there’s a cradle in our room for the first several weeks. I keep telling you that the baby is going to sleep there. You repeat it, but again, I’m not sure you really get it.

Thank you. Thank you for teaching me to be a good mommy. Thank you for allowing me to maintain my sense of humor. Thank you for showing me what unconditional love really is. It’s a lesson you can only learn from your child, and I hope that some day you will learn it from your own baby. You have been training me for this second child, and I think I’m ready--I think we’re all ready. I love you!

Who am I kidding? This is who I am now. I am still Tyra, but I am also Mommy, which is a wonderful thing to be.

More to follow....

(Some of) The Many Mysteries of Motherhood

2006-08-15T16:30:00.000-04:00

Why is it that, when banished to the time-out spot, children (at least mine) must continue to exhibit the unpleasant behavior (i.e. hissy fit) all the way there?

Why is it that, after spending six, yes, I said six hours in her room (wait 'til your father gets home) for kicking her brother in the face, The Divine Miss M would think it's a good idea to sneak out of her room and slug her brother?

How can the same children who pick me flowers, draw me pictures, and shower me with kisses be so blatantly defiant and obnoxious when I ask them to make their beds or pick up their toys?

And, last but not least, is it September YET???

Tuesday Number Three

2006-08-15T16:26:00.000-04:00

Two weeks into the game, and the results are in. The team total is 16 pounds.

Mrs. Friend weighed in with a 4 pound loss this week, bringing her total to 6 pounds.

Mrs. Pal weighed in with a 2 pound loss, totaling 4 pounds.

And, Mrs. Me weighed in with a 2 pound loss, for a total of 6 pounds.

Gooooooooooo, team!!!