These two young people, dreamy-eyed and hopelessly enamoured, pledged their love to each other in front of God and all their family and friends. It seems like only yesterday. Happy Anniversary, Greg!
and may my bangs rest in peace. Amen.
Friday, December 28, 2007
A Dozen Years Ago
These two young people, dreamy-eyed and hopelessly enamoured, pledged their love to each other in front of God and all their family and friends. It seems like only yesterday. 
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Tired of Leftovers?
Oh, so sorry to hear it, because that's what I'm serving today. Actually, this is some writing I did just before I started my blog, so consider it a little taste of summer in this cold season.
August 1, 2007
Today we went to the city pool. My son Tommy has a love/hate relationship with the pool. He desperately wants to jump in and swim, but he doesn’t quite trust his own abilities and mostly stays close to the sides and the steps in the shallow end. He watches his friends jump and slide and swim without a care, and he is just eaten up with the longing to do the same.
I'll just stop right here and say that my kids have never had swim lessons and I feel guilty about it. My friend Julie, whose family went with us to the pool, has her kids in lessons year round. They know more strokes than I knew existed and they swim competitively at the ages of 6 and 8. They are wonderful athletes, and my kids are deprived because I am too broke and/or too lazy to take them to swim lessons. There. I got that off my chest.
Today was the day Tommy decided he wanted to go down the slide like all of his friends were doing. He begged and pleaded and whined about how much he wanted to go down that slide. I told him that he could certainly go down the slide, but he needed to be able to jump into four feet of water and swim to the edge without help (and without floaties) before I would let him go over there. So he climbed out of the water, trotted over to the only slightly deeper side, and proceeded to have a meltdown on the side of the pool because he was too scared to jump in. Then he started to go back to the shallow side, but something inside his little heart called him back to the edge, and he turned around and came back.
This continued, back and forth, for about 15 minutes. When I told him to just forget it and go swim in the shallow end, his crying intensified, and I felt myself considering having a meltdown of my own. There was no reasoning with this child at this point. He was in such turmoil, deeply desiring to do something that terrified him.
Finally, he mustered up the courage to jump off. He coached me about where I need to stand, (“Closer, Mama, closer!”) and then, after much cajoling, heartily went for it. He leaped out into what he thought would be my arms, only I moved away at the last second so he would hit the water. In a moment of sheer panic, he reached out for the only thing within his grasp, which was, unfortunately, the top of my bathing suit. He used the leverage he gained after pulling my bathing suit down, which caused me to lean in toward him, to hook his other arm in a chokehold around my neck. So there we were in the water, me struggling to disengage his arms from my windpipe while making sure my girls were all covered up, and him screaming and crying over the betrayal and the sheer frustration of being afraid to swim.
Thankfully, the whistle blew for adult swim and we had ten minutes to regroup. It was past time to go, everyone was tired and getting cranky, but Tommy was haunted by that slide. I looked at Julie, and said, “I think I’ll just let him go down. The lifeguard can fish him out if he gets in trouble.” And, good friend that she is, she agreed. We also agreed that if he did have to be rescued by the lifeguard, we just wouldn’t come back to this pool for the rest of the summer. It would be too embarrassing.
As soon as the whistle blew, Tommy solemnly climbed the stairs up to the slide. I positioned myself close to the roped off area in the pool to cheer on my brave boy. He reached the top of the stairs and stood behind the giant blue tube that would transport him one step closer to manhood. And froze. He wouldn’t budge. His mind was terrified, but his heart wouldn’t let him back down. I tried encouraging him. I promised him a dollar. I begged him. I ordered him to just come back down the stairs. He would not move.
Finally, the calls of the children in line convinced him to come down the steps in humiliation. To my surprise, he walked right back to the end of the line to wait for another chance. He stood in line, smiling. “I’ll do it this time, Mama.” This continued for another five minutes or so, climbing up, freaking out, climbing back down again to wait for another chance.
At last, my loyal friend Julie looked at me and said, “Do you want me to push him?”
“YES,” I replied, sorry I hadn’t thought of it earlier. This is why Julie’s kids can swim and mine can’t.
Julie marched right up there to the top of the stairs, pried his hands off the sides of that slide and gave him a good shove. I could hear her sweet little voice saying, “Come on, you can do it!” as she heaved him into the tube. Tommy came flailing down the slide and into the water with a splash. Almost instantly, his head popped up, his eyes wide with shock, and he lunged in my direction. As soon as he reached my fingertips, he began crying. Screaming, actually. He resumed his death grip around my neck, and continued crying inconsolably as I trudged up the steps out of the pool and began trying to pack up my belongings to go home. Julie looked slightly remorseful, and I was trying to hide my smile.
Naturally, about this time, three year old Katie started crying because she wanted to be picked up, too, and my six year old, Grace, started whining because she wanted a turn to go off the slide now that she realized Tommy was getting a dollar and she was not. (On a side note, she had done the dance up and down the ladder four or five times that day and had never mustered the courage to go though with it.)
We made quite a scene exiting that pool, with all three of my children whining and crying, me threatening them with bodily harm if they don’t stop fussing, and Julie and her kids walking quietly and oh-so-well-behaved behind us.
Later that evening, I heard Tommy proudly telling his Daddy that he went down the slide at the city pool.
“All by yourself?” Greg wanted to know.
“Yeah! (pause) Well, Mrs. Julie pushed me.”
August 1, 2007
Today we went to the city pool. My son Tommy has a love/hate relationship with the pool. He desperately wants to jump in and swim, but he doesn’t quite trust his own abilities and mostly stays close to the sides and the steps in the shallow end. He watches his friends jump and slide and swim without a care, and he is just eaten up with the longing to do the same.
I'll just stop right here and say that my kids have never had swim lessons and I feel guilty about it. My friend Julie, whose family went with us to the pool, has her kids in lessons year round. They know more strokes than I knew existed and they swim competitively at the ages of 6 and 8. They are wonderful athletes, and my kids are deprived because I am too broke and/or too lazy to take them to swim lessons. There. I got that off my chest.
Today was the day Tommy decided he wanted to go down the slide like all of his friends were doing. He begged and pleaded and whined about how much he wanted to go down that slide. I told him that he could certainly go down the slide, but he needed to be able to jump into four feet of water and swim to the edge without help (and without floaties) before I would let him go over there. So he climbed out of the water, trotted over to the only slightly deeper side, and proceeded to have a meltdown on the side of the pool because he was too scared to jump in. Then he started to go back to the shallow side, but something inside his little heart called him back to the edge, and he turned around and came back.
This continued, back and forth, for about 15 minutes. When I told him to just forget it and go swim in the shallow end, his crying intensified, and I felt myself considering having a meltdown of my own. There was no reasoning with this child at this point. He was in such turmoil, deeply desiring to do something that terrified him.
Finally, he mustered up the courage to jump off. He coached me about where I need to stand, (“Closer, Mama, closer!”) and then, after much cajoling, heartily went for it. He leaped out into what he thought would be my arms, only I moved away at the last second so he would hit the water. In a moment of sheer panic, he reached out for the only thing within his grasp, which was, unfortunately, the top of my bathing suit. He used the leverage he gained after pulling my bathing suit down, which caused me to lean in toward him, to hook his other arm in a chokehold around my neck. So there we were in the water, me struggling to disengage his arms from my windpipe while making sure my girls were all covered up, and him screaming and crying over the betrayal and the sheer frustration of being afraid to swim.
Thankfully, the whistle blew for adult swim and we had ten minutes to regroup. It was past time to go, everyone was tired and getting cranky, but Tommy was haunted by that slide. I looked at Julie, and said, “I think I’ll just let him go down. The lifeguard can fish him out if he gets in trouble.” And, good friend that she is, she agreed. We also agreed that if he did have to be rescued by the lifeguard, we just wouldn’t come back to this pool for the rest of the summer. It would be too embarrassing.
As soon as the whistle blew, Tommy solemnly climbed the stairs up to the slide. I positioned myself close to the roped off area in the pool to cheer on my brave boy. He reached the top of the stairs and stood behind the giant blue tube that would transport him one step closer to manhood. And froze. He wouldn’t budge. His mind was terrified, but his heart wouldn’t let him back down. I tried encouraging him. I promised him a dollar. I begged him. I ordered him to just come back down the stairs. He would not move.
Finally, the calls of the children in line convinced him to come down the steps in humiliation. To my surprise, he walked right back to the end of the line to wait for another chance. He stood in line, smiling. “I’ll do it this time, Mama.” This continued for another five minutes or so, climbing up, freaking out, climbing back down again to wait for another chance.
At last, my loyal friend Julie looked at me and said, “Do you want me to push him?”
“YES,” I replied, sorry I hadn’t thought of it earlier. This is why Julie’s kids can swim and mine can’t.
Julie marched right up there to the top of the stairs, pried his hands off the sides of that slide and gave him a good shove. I could hear her sweet little voice saying, “Come on, you can do it!” as she heaved him into the tube. Tommy came flailing down the slide and into the water with a splash. Almost instantly, his head popped up, his eyes wide with shock, and he lunged in my direction. As soon as he reached my fingertips, he began crying. Screaming, actually. He resumed his death grip around my neck, and continued crying inconsolably as I trudged up the steps out of the pool and began trying to pack up my belongings to go home. Julie looked slightly remorseful, and I was trying to hide my smile.
Naturally, about this time, three year old Katie started crying because she wanted to be picked up, too, and my six year old, Grace, started whining because she wanted a turn to go off the slide now that she realized Tommy was getting a dollar and she was not. (On a side note, she had done the dance up and down the ladder four or five times that day and had never mustered the courage to go though with it.)
We made quite a scene exiting that pool, with all three of my children whining and crying, me threatening them with bodily harm if they don’t stop fussing, and Julie and her kids walking quietly and oh-so-well-behaved behind us.
Later that evening, I heard Tommy proudly telling his Daddy that he went down the slide at the city pool.
“All by yourself?” Greg wanted to know.
“Yeah! (pause) Well, Mrs. Julie pushed me.”
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
In My Mind I'm Gone To Carolina...
And in person, too, it seems.
We decided at the last minute to take a trip out East, a very spur of the moment thing to do, also pretty much insane for a family of five plus a dog, but we've packed and loaded the car and we're headed out in the morning.
It'll be a pretty quick trip, meaning the drive time will be almost equal to the visiting time, but I have two new baby nephews to snuggle, and I can't wait. It's always hard to be away from my loved ones at this time of year, especially when they're all under one roof eating gumbo and promising to e-mail me pictures. So I'll show them, I'll just bring my crew and crash their party. Ha.
Meanwhile, I'll be away from the ol' blog for a while, but I do have a few extra posts up my sleeve, so be sure to come back and visit soon. I promise, it'll be worthwhile. I'll give you a hint: you'll get to see me with some lovely tall curling-ironed bangs. All crunchy with hairspray. Oh, it'll be fun.
I hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas.
We decided at the last minute to take a trip out East, a very spur of the moment thing to do, also pretty much insane for a family of five plus a dog, but we've packed and loaded the car and we're headed out in the morning.
It'll be a pretty quick trip, meaning the drive time will be almost equal to the visiting time, but I have two new baby nephews to snuggle, and I can't wait. It's always hard to be away from my loved ones at this time of year, especially when they're all under one roof eating gumbo and promising to e-mail me pictures. So I'll show them, I'll just bring my crew and crash their party. Ha.
Meanwhile, I'll be away from the ol' blog for a while, but I do have a few extra posts up my sleeve, so be sure to come back and visit soon. I promise, it'll be worthwhile. I'll give you a hint: you'll get to see me with some lovely tall curling-ironed bangs. All crunchy with hairspray. Oh, it'll be fun.
I hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Guess Which Celebrity Crashed our Neighborhood Christmas Party?
The Big Guy arrived to an onslaught of paparazzi and hordes of squealing, adoring fans.
Some were more reserved.
Some began to grow suspicious of his authenticity. They questioned his nerdy glasses and creepy, gnarled hands.
Others were unsure about wiry, loose-fitting beard.
Some just didn't like him at all,
and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.
But they were all won over by his gifts of chocolate. Until he drove away into the night in his Nissan Sentra, and the questions began again.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
In Which the Chaos Finally Swallows Me Up
I'm not the kind of person that's good at tending to details. Details don't bother me. I don't sweat them. I'm not meticulous about anything. I do not make excuses for my children when they dress themselves in mismatched clothing. I do not lose sleep at night if there are dirty dishes in the sink. I'm perfectly comfortable reading a book (or a blog) with two baskets of laundry strewn on my couch.
In fact, I'm comfortable with a certain level of messiness around me. I function well in it. I feel at home in it. I'm just a left-handed, right-brained, scattered-about, disorganized mess, and I'm okay with that. If I lived alone, I would have no conflict whatsoever with my natural inclination towards chaos.
However, it seems that I have found myself in charge of running a household. A household filled with other messy, disorganized, scattered-about messes who continuously need me to manage the whereabouts of petty little things like socks and cold medicine. They are constantly expecting me to be able to identify where their mittens are and where the black sparkly tights are that go with this pretty Christmas dress, with matching hairbows that we haven't seen in a couple of weeks, which I suspect are on the floor of my car.
I gotta tell you, I'm flunking out in this department. I just don't have the organizational skills to stay on top of this stuff. I am constantly searching for things.
Which brings us to Monday. Brownie meeting day. In the afternoons, I must leave my house by 3:25 to arrive at the carpool lane at school just in time to meet my daughter and Brownie friends at the curb. So of course, I sat at my computer on Monday until the clock read 3:23. (I just had to check a couple of blogs and leave my witty comments, you know, because I know how much people crave my witty comments.) At 3:23, I rounded up my younger kids and headed for my car, but.....where are my keys? Not here. Not there. Not in the kitchen. Not by the front door. Not in my coat pocket. Not in my purse.
I looked everywhere for my keys, and my frustration level rose as each minute ticked by. Finally, at 3:35, I found my husband's keys and dashed out the door, only to remember as the door was slamming that he doesn't keep a house key on his car key chain. (Why, honey? Why do you do that?) I pushed on, and arrived to find my little girls in brown sitting dejectedly on the curb at 3:39 while their teacher patiently waited. I apologized profusely and zoomed back home to find the rest of the Brownie troop waiting at my front door to be let in.
At the end of the day, exasperated at my inability to find my keys, I checked one last place for them: on the hook in the kitchen. Where they belong.
Yeah. I need help.
But I'll settle for your witty comments.
In fact, I'm comfortable with a certain level of messiness around me. I function well in it. I feel at home in it. I'm just a left-handed, right-brained, scattered-about, disorganized mess, and I'm okay with that. If I lived alone, I would have no conflict whatsoever with my natural inclination towards chaos.
However, it seems that I have found myself in charge of running a household. A household filled with other messy, disorganized, scattered-about messes who continuously need me to manage the whereabouts of petty little things like socks and cold medicine. They are constantly expecting me to be able to identify where their mittens are and where the black sparkly tights are that go with this pretty Christmas dress, with matching hairbows that we haven't seen in a couple of weeks, which I suspect are on the floor of my car.
I gotta tell you, I'm flunking out in this department. I just don't have the organizational skills to stay on top of this stuff. I am constantly searching for things.
Which brings us to Monday. Brownie meeting day. In the afternoons, I must leave my house by 3:25 to arrive at the carpool lane at school just in time to meet my daughter and Brownie friends at the curb. So of course, I sat at my computer on Monday until the clock read 3:23. (I just had to check a couple of blogs and leave my witty comments, you know, because I know how much people crave my witty comments.) At 3:23, I rounded up my younger kids and headed for my car, but.....where are my keys? Not here. Not there. Not in the kitchen. Not by the front door. Not in my coat pocket. Not in my purse.
I looked everywhere for my keys, and my frustration level rose as each minute ticked by. Finally, at 3:35, I found my husband's keys and dashed out the door, only to remember as the door was slamming that he doesn't keep a house key on his car key chain. (Why, honey? Why do you do that?) I pushed on, and arrived to find my little girls in brown sitting dejectedly on the curb at 3:39 while their teacher patiently waited. I apologized profusely and zoomed back home to find the rest of the Brownie troop waiting at my front door to be let in.
At the end of the day, exasperated at my inability to find my keys, I checked one last place for them: on the hook in the kitchen. Where they belong.
Yeah. I need help.
But I'll settle for your witty comments.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
I've always wanted to hire kitchen help...
but it turns out I have access to unlimited free child labor right here in my own home. Here they are, working diligently to mass produce sugar cookies for my consumption:
Pay no attention to that cluttered kitchen you see behind her. My minions will clean that up next.
And quit looking at my 1970's wood paneling. It's coming back in style, I swear.
At my cookie factory, we are all about the business of making cookies.
No smiling is allowed. Back to work! And no sampling the icing!
You can tell by his bedhead and beleaguered expression that this one was up before dawn to begin his labor.
Look alive, kid. You haven't met your quota.
Never mind that sewing machine in the background. I'll put the littlest one to work on that after her cookie shift has ended.
She's still got a good eight hours or so left before her next cocoa break.
Pay no attention to that cluttered kitchen you see behind her. My minions will clean that up next.
And quit looking at my 1970's wood paneling. It's coming back in style, I swear.
At my cookie factory, we are all about the business of making cookies.
No smiling is allowed. Back to work! And no sampling the icing!
You can tell by his bedhead and beleaguered expression that this one was up before dawn to begin his labor.
Look alive, kid. You haven't met your quota.
Never mind that sewing machine in the background. I'll put the littlest one to work on that after her cookie shift has ended.
She's still got a good eight hours or so left before her next cocoa break.
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The kiddos
