In Which She Inflicts Vacation Photos On All Of You

So I'm back, sort of. Back in the sense that the bags are unpacked and put away, the wash is done, the house is in its usual state of disarray and the kitty has forgiven us for abandoning her. Actually, she seemed fine with the whole thing and looked rather horrified when we walked in the door all loud and stinky. She wore that look of "Oh. God. I thought you were coming back tomorrow. I thought I had another day to finish that season of My Name Is Earl."



All told, we had 4 days in lovely Door County (that pointy bit of land at the NE end of Wisconsin that sticks in such a fragile way between Green Bay and Lake Michigan) and did little but eat, nap, hang out with each other and go fishin'. (Caught nothin' but a very small bullhead that looked really pissed off, but after all was said and done, was left with a belly full of worm and tales to tell of his abduction to the drowning atmosphere above the lake and the monsters that live there. I'm sure he'll get lots of use of that tale down at the fish pub where they'll buy him pints and await the tale of how he single-fin-edly beat up the 4 enormous aliens and then escaped back to the deeps with their sweet, wriggling food. Good for him.)



We also taught Colin and Sara how to play Monopoly and how he who 1) buys up all the railroads and utilities and 2) doesn't get bored and quit after the first couple of hours tends to win. It's good to pass on such knowledge from one's own childhood to one's offspring.



We did, indeed, go to a fish boil and ladled butter on fish, potatoes and onions. We ate many cherry-inspired products, like pie. And wine. And brought back lots of pancake and scone mixes. And jam and syrup and dried cherries. And wine. I also let Sara learn to take pictures with my camera, and so for the first time in 20 years,I have vacation photos with me in them because someone else was snapping the scenes as well.



And so we all had a short, lovely, restful time, except for poor Molly-dog, who just thought the whole thing was wrong and WHAT the hell were we doing in this little house that smelled funny and had red tartan carpet in the kitchen and hall and WHAT would the kitty do with no one to chase her and give her a good butt licking. She clearly felt that it was all so wrong and couldn't understand why we didn't take her hint of staring hard at the car whenever we passed it, and just get in and go back home where we belonged.

It's always good to mess with your dog.

And so we've been and gone and returned and had our vacation.

The second half of the ag-med conference was as good as the first. I can now talk of ROPS and help you figure out what sort of respirator you need if you are cleaning out a silo, working in a CAFO or spraying your fields. I can also be found hollering from inside my car when driving past the fields and barns in my locale, "Hey! You! What the hell are you doing driving that tricycle tractor with the front end loaded!" and "Hey! You! I see you plowing that field in your cabless tractor without adequate hearing protection, sun screen, wide brimmed hat, respirator mask or ROPS!" In short, I've become even more of an embarrassment to polite society.



Now I must get the contents of the 2" (5cm) syllabus and good-sized textbook into my squash, so I can pass the damn test and make my employer proud to have spent all that money (actually, in the scheme of things, it wasn't that much money as such things go) for me to have done this, which means that I'll still be blogging sporadically for weeks to come. That study time has to come from somewhere.

Charles is winding up his days as principal at his soon-to-be-old district. He drove to work today in the SUV to load up almost all his office-ly possessions and move them to the new digs. He starts next Tuesday, which means we have only one more day of driving in to work together. The end of an era.

And, so, I'll leave you with this year's before and after shots of the front flower beds. You'll notice that the 3 low-lying juniper bushes at the front of the bed have gone the way of Wanda and Muriel, last year's alien-abducted cinquefoil and have been replaced by about 20 pretty-pretty flowering lovelies. (Well, they will be flowering when it's their time to do so.) You'll also notice that I need to get busy and divide all the pretties that have cancer-like grown and taken over the garden, transforming it into something that looks like the Amazon jungle.

Bleak, Living Hell

There's this wan, peacefulness I've seen in the faces of grandly multiparous women. You know the ones--those with more than 5 kids. They seem serene in the face of all sorts of chaos and I'm fairly sure I know why.

They've had enough of their souls removed, a piece at a time from that horror of horrors: the school concert. In particular the Grade School Concert. At least in the secondary years, the 'music' is at least somewhat recognizable and, if you are lucky, there's a tune you know and can therefore count down the stanzas until it's done. Unless it's been butchered by scatting and whatnot by some demonic jazz stylist, and then you'd best just resign yourself to your misery.

I've heard there are some districts, pushed to the brink by budget crunches, that are forced to cut music in the schools. "Hah!" I scoff. It's not that the parents are not willing to pay the taxes, it's that they've wised up and realized that if they vote down referendum after referendum on school funding that they'll NEVER HAVE TO GO TO ANOTHER SCHOOL CONCERT AGAIN. These are fine, intelligent, free-thinking people.

"It's not that bad," you who have yet to experience the horror say. I, too, remember performing in these concerts and looking forward to the singing of "Feelin' Groovy" and "Rainy Days and Mondays", complete with hand gestures and careful swaying in time while standing on the bleachers on the stage, or the playing of "The Theme From M*A*S*H", if you were of an orchestral bent. (This was particularly subliminal as the lyrics, as most of us know, go "Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes, and I can take or leave it as I please." I wonder if the actual suicide rate did bump over the following days among those exposed to such sawed out works. Someone commission a study.)

So as I sat, with Sara at my side (the kindergartners only have to do the winter concert), in the 100+ degree F (38+ degree C) fetid, rancid gymnasium, hunched among the sweaty family members of the rest of the student body (some who spent the entire time in a slack-jawed stupor, others, like the pair behind me, desperately trying to hang on to their shards of reality by dissecting the private lives of various and sundry of their village acquaintances throughout the whole thing in normal speaking voices), I realized that I felt progressively lighter and lighter--the result of bits of my soul being torn away, piece by piece. The largest bite, sadly, was when Colin's grade performed a piece called, I kid you not, "Galactic Swamp Dance" entirely on flutophone (a cheap, plastic recorder sounding rather like a kazoo, but more nasal and grating, if possible). Painful does not begin to cover it. Nails on a blackboard could take a lesson. We had descended to the depths of hell: hot, smelly, humid, hopeless, helpless, interminable. At this point, trapped as Sara and I were, in the middle of the bleachers, having gotten there too late to score one of the folding metal chairs or at least a bottom seat on the bleachers, by the doors and the fire alarm pull, I abandoned myself to my fate and sunk into a funk. "Oh, woe is me" droned on the interminable chorus of one song. Oh, woe, indeed. Trapped like rats.

But then! Lo! Sara pulled free, and summoning her strength (and perhaps with the help of a guardian angel or 4) uttered the words of my salvation, "Mommy! I HAVE to go to the bathroom N.O.W." A small shaft of light pierced my psyche and somewhere the trace of a breeze stirred. The lackluster clapping of my fellow suffers gave me hope and a shifting of time and space indicated a slight path down from the bleachers.

I grabbed Sara's hand and took the shining way, jostling those still trapped in their misery and garnering many baleful and downright angry looks. "Sorry, coming through. She needs the bathroom." While envious, none dared to bar our escape. No one wants to mess with a child in need of the toilet.

And so, we spent the last sets of the most recent Concert from Hell seeking out and then dawdling in one of the grade school bathrooms. And then we caught the Grand Finale, standing just outside one of the gym doorways, where all the little darlin's come in and do the splashy finish-y song, some incomprehensible number called "Save the Earth", complete with cheerleaders (Yes. Really.) and hand gestures and cartwheels.

Actually, just before breaking into this cacophony, some poor kid spewed his gastric contents all over the gym floor, next to the piano, causing an interminable delay as the janitor was frantically sought via loud speaker and faculty runners. He appeared with mop and rolling pail and attended to the sick. Sadly, the rest of the audience was too far gone to break free and flee, and just continued sitting there while this took place, waiting as cows for the slaughter.

But finally, it was over and Sara and I (Where the hell was Charles? Why at school registration. So he said. I'm not entirely sure, though, as he is widely known to have an extra helping of brains and more than his fair share of dislike of such things.) struggled through the halls, with the rest of the lemming parents, in search of our young, who had been kept hostage-like from us. (The only announcement at the start of all this was that we WERE to REMAIN seated until ALL the children were done performing. NO ONE would be allowed to collect their children before the concert was over. Sneaky bastards.)

It wasn't quite as bad as this, but close. At least last night's concert had a program that could be followed, so you could count down the years until your sentence was served.

And so, here I sit, several ounces lighter, thanks to the soul-ectomy, plotting ways to organize my fellow parents into a "We'll pass any tax that'll fund schools as long as music remains firmly separated from us." Sort of like church and state. Complete separation or else no tax dollars.

I see why people home school. It's starting to sound worth it.

Haikus For Sneaky Girls

Sara's sick again.
Again; third time in a month,
nineteenth time this year.

(OK, maybe I
exaggerate. A bit. Just
seems like forever.)

And while we hate it
that she feels so bad: achy,
snotty, sniffly, wan.

It's the fevers high
That suck our souls dry, and leave
us ashen with dread.

See, the thing our kids
do well; really, really well
is run HIGH fevers.

105 is par
for their little viral course;
eggs fry on their brains.

Colin set the way
of violently refusing
all good medicine.

He'd vomit as soon
as any flavor or form
of med reached his mouth.

Luckily, by five,
he learned to swallow his pills
and it's been fine since.

Sara can't bear to
be less of a stress to us,
so she vomits, too.

We threaten, cajole
and yell, but still the fevers
rise and terrify.

But this time, it was
different, she took it well
and smiled all the time.

"Finally!", we cried
She realizes that it
makes her feel better.

Ah, what saps we are.
For in the bathroom trash are
all her fever pills.

They don't work so well
if they're not in her system.
Sneakiness and lies.

Tough to punish her,
Flushed and ill, sobbing still, she's
sad at being caught.

But still, it must be
done. No more Samurai Jack
or Open Season.

And, Hey! What's this? A
find! While cleaning out cupboards,
something for next time!!

There is another route,
you see. I found Tylenol
suppositories!

Don't mess with Dr Mom.

Spring Cleaning

Enough.

Enough of the endless winter ennui.

Enough of feeling sorry for myself for the lack of spring. And the persistance of grime. And mouse turds.

Enough.

Enough of yet another week lost in work and illness. (Yes. The ninth bout of crud for this season. Not approaching that horrible season of '01, where I succumbed to 14 separate bouts of crud between November and June--the first year of same-day-caring and therefore abbreviated, no less, so stop whining.)

Enough.

So, I arose with some semblance of energy and a bee in my butt. Well, a bee after a morning loafing with the small ones on the sofas, eating breakfast and doing nothing of value beyond the eating and getting breakfast for various and sundry beings. And that after sleeping in to the slothful hour of 7:04 AM CDT. ("Boy, mom sure sleeps late on weekends, doesn't she, Dad? Yes, son, she sure does, but some people like to sleep in a bit on the weekends.")

Enough.

Well, enough after lunch and a rest. And the getting of lunch for the various and sundry. And the starting of seeds in small pots of peat under newly purchased grow lights. $100 spent to save $40 in new plants. If they live. But if one is going to claim to be a gardener, at some point one really does need to commit to growing more than sunflowers from seed. (And let's face it, the sunflowers have had less than a 50% success rate. More like 5%. Sunflowers. The things that grow where birds poop them.)

Enough. 1:30 pm and out you go. To the garage where you need to expell the garage floor of winter gravel and sand and dust on the floor of cement. And mouse doodies. Let's not forget the pounds of mouse doodies. Apparently the few field mice that did manage to get into the garage this winter found it to be the land of milk and honey and bags of garbage of partially eaten foodstuffs. And it was good. And cathartic. And they did eat much of it. And now, that they are no more with us (may their little beady-eyed souls rest in peace in the great garbage-filled garage in the sky), it is time to rid the garage of their evidence, the small black ovals blanketing the garage. (Let's try not to remember the symptoms of Hantavirus, shall we? Or the Hantavirus deaths.)

A full hour spent sweeping the detritus of the winter from the garage. And now to the garden. The first day of gardening. The first day of cleaning out two of the three parts of the front flower beds, each finally with noses of the bulbs of daffodils and tulips and the first flowers of the bravest of crocuses up, finally exposed to the sun, previously hidden by the rotting, frozen plant matter of last fall's fallen, now removed. New. Green. Forgotten. Remembered.

Oh, but wait.

I forgot the visitor.

Standing 100 meters (100 yards for those of us who still cling to the outmoded) from where I paced, sweeping, was the large, antler-free quadroped, gleaning the freshly plowed cornfield across the road and looking like chiseled Adonis. Molly-dog and I surreptitiously watched him from across the road for 10 minutes as he studiously ignored us, looking buff but aware of our admiration. And then the spell was broken.

Charles, sleepy from his afternoon nap (naps are important if you start your day at 5 am on the weekend for no better reason than habit), stepped out to investigate the dual sighting of a llama in the cornfield across the road.

("Dad! Dad! Wake up! There's a LLAMA across the road! Really! You've got to come and see!)

We decide that our children may not be as countrified as we thought, if they can't tell the difference between a llama and a deer at a distance of 100 m. (The 'llama' having bounded away in a distinctly un-llama-like fashion, flashing his white tale.)

Or maybe it's not that they aren't yet countrified, but it's in their genes to see llamas.

Happy springish.

So Far, I'm Liking 2008 Much Better

Hush.

Do you hear that? That's silence, that is. Golden, diamond-studded solitude. Well, except for the dog. There's always The Dog. Sort of like a shadow whose nails click on the floor. She'd really like for you to either just stay where you are, so she doesn't have to keep getting up from her nap to follow you to the next room, or she'd really like for you to go outside and play in the snow. But you're used to that sort of presence and judgement in your life.

But the rest...it's so quiet and peaceful.

Remember back at the end of the summer? School was to start, and for the first time in 9 years, I was to be alone in my own house for more than a couple of minutes at a time? I'd get to watch trash on TV without constant haranguing from the small handed ones. I'd get to nap in silence (yes, yes, except for The Dog). I could eat ice cream and chocolate for lunch and no one would be the wiser except for me and my sucrose-ill self. I could finally pee in solitude, no small girl barging in no matter how I explained that "Mommy really would like some privacy, NOW!"

And all that lasted, I believe for 2 whole days: a Thursday and its following Friday. Then Lilian had her fall and her heart attack and came to be with us, along with all my darling parents in succession, with surgery and recovery and meals on trays and visiting nurses. Everything fell together very fortunately, with minimal work lost, no permanent placement in an assisted care center, no daycare.

But, no solitude that I'd looked forward to with the same gleam in my eye that a prisoner has as he counts the days until release in hatch marks on his cell wall, listening to the living noise of his cell mates day in and day out.

Cell mates that he may actually adore; whose company he may have sought out and actively recruited, but everyone (and by 'everyone' I of course mean 'me') needs, nay craves, solitude.

And today, I have it. 5 whole hours from bus pick-up until bus drop-off.

I feel like a new woman. A new woman with rumpled hair from curling up on the couch, reading. A woman with no make-up (because...why?) a woman who's clothes may be a bit ripe but are comfortable.

I don't have the full 2 days at the end of each week that I'd planned on. Lilian still has her rehab that she needs to be ferried to each Friday afternoon, and tomorrow I've got to take The Dog to the vet, as well (Diarrhea. Dog and Diarrhea.) so that'll blow the Fridays, but if I can just have the Thursdays, I will be satisfied.

Happy New Year to me.

------------------

And speaking of years that are new, you'll be glad to know that I've already achieved my one and only resolution:

As I am beyond tired of shirts that are too short. I have declared war on shirts that are too short. I have purged my closet, shelves and drawers of any and all shirts that have a tail less than a full 8" below my belt line. I have freed myself from the drafty, horrifying double whammy of raising my arms in the course of living and exposing my white, dimply bare midriff to the chill and to the offense of the eyes of others.



I will accept words of gratitude from the general public.



I will look for some sort of award for Special Services To Humanity in the mail.



I will NEVER buy an inadequate shirt again.



Should anyone wish to start a fund to hunt down those who've perpetuated such misery in the name of fashion, I will gladly contribute time and resources.

And kindling.

For Colin, Turning Nine

And so you are nine, my boy. I'm having something of a hard time getting my head around the fact that nine years ago I held you, this tiny (a whopping 5 lbs, 11 oz of you), calm, thoughtful creature who arrived so very considerately, 2 and a half weeks early, on a Thursday, my hellacious clinic day, so I didn't have to go to work tired and pregnant a day more.

Those have been some of your enduring traits: Your thoughtfulness, your compassion, your willingness to help out others.

(OK, so you gripe when asked to clean your room or set the table. I never said you were a freak, just that you are a really genuinely good person.)



You are also one amazing big brother to Sara, who, let's be honest, can be on the trying side from time to time. No one gets on your nerves like she does, but should something happen to her, anything from getting punished for doing something naughty to getting lost at the back of the bus on the way home, you are right there, protecting her.



(I swear that is not a posed picture. I just snapped it as it happened.)



Teaching her.

You still love the sciences. This year, instead of geology (although you still maintain an interest, just not such a consuming one), chemistry is your thing. I think most of this interest is that you think chemistry is in part making potions, which in a way it is, it's just that instead of turning you invisible if you drink the foaming contents of the beaker, you are likely to end up with a severe stomach ache, if you are lucky. Not wanting to burst this bubble, though, I have a feeling that Santa will be bringing you a bizarro chemistry set or two, so you can make some safe potions that won't turn out to be strychnine but green slime or a superball or something. Santa loves science nerds. Santa IS a science nerd. Yes she is.



Of course, this doesn't mean that you aren't a typical nine-year-old boy. No, it doesn't. You delight in fart jokes and poop jokes and really wanted to hand out whoopie cushions for party favors this year. A combination of how I'd feel as the parent of a fellow nine-year-old boy who brought home a whoopie cushion and used it non-stop for months on end and the fact that each one cost $5, led me to steer you to the quieter yet still twisted Chinese finger traps for your friends, along with water squirting grenades, mini Magic 8 balls and the like.



Speaking of your party this year, I'd say it was an unmitigated success. We took a page out of Chuck E. Cheeze's book and had all your friends over, stuffing all of you full of pizza and cake and then turning you all loose downstairs with the video games and the big TV for a couple of hours. 7 nine-year-olds all jumping up and down (because boys of that age are incapable of not jumping up and down while playing video games) at the same time and to the same rhythm nearly shook the cabinets from the house and the house from its foundation, but the structural damage to our little domicile was worth it. May I also say that you have really nice friends who all seem to think you are quite the great guy. As your mom, I can't tell you how that makes me grin big, stupid grins. If you continue to have great friends, you will be blessed, indeed. (And I'll worry less. Slightly less. Marginally. Maybe.)

So what I really wanted to say is how proud of you I am, how you make my heart swell, how thinking of you makes me get this big, sappy look on my face. I know, I'm embarrassing. All moms are when you get over the age of 5. But dammit, that's what you get for being so great.



But clearly, I'm not alone with this view, though at least I don't sit on you.

Deck The Son With Boughs of Gooey

See, we really do get into the Christmas swing of things here, come December. Currently, Colin is in the lead with his own personal Left Eye of Christmas: The white portion being glazed over with a patina of deep red accompanied by plenty of glisteny green goo piling in the corners and festooning the lashes.

I tried to drape tinsel across his brow and hang mistletoe from his ears but he vetoed that, bolting to his room and barring the door. I considered getting a picture of the seasonal boy this morning but as I left at 0'dark-hundred, he was still asleep with a blanket wrapped all around his head. Being a compassionate and thoughtful mother, I decided, after much deliberation, not to waken him to the twin assault of my fingers prying his eye open to the flash of the camera.

He can now never say that I don't love him or put his needs first.

So, what to do to top this? The Rudolph schnozz with the green nose snot has been so over done; the human equivalent of fruitcake. I could use flaky skin as snow with a few snowman shaped boils (courtesy of the multitude of staph patients I get to see) clustered tastefully across my arms. My hands are certainly cold enough to provide the illusion of being made of ice, to further enhance the theme.

Pestilence as body art, for those who've tired of tattoos and piercings.

Follow-Up

So, Diana, what's going on out there in the land of brats and cheese, corn and cows? You've had a thing or two going on and have provided no feedback. What gives?


Well, thanks for asking! (Aren't you the kind ones to do so?)


Let's see...


Thanksgiving was nice and quiet and all the food turned out, so that was pretty perfect. Sadly, we were to a man Jack of us (Woman Jill? Kid Joe?) coughing and hacking (the bouquet of the phlegm blended so nicely with the gravy), so Lilian decided that an upper respiratory infection just wouldn't go well with her sternotomy scar and stayed away from all the festive nose-blowing. As her skilled nursing benefits were up (and as she was up and around), she and her few belongings shuffled across the small parking lot and back into her own apartment under the watchful eye of her neighbor, on Saturday.


Yes! Lilian has re-entered the building! She was to have come to us after leaving the nursing home, but, again, the coughing and sniffling and liberal usage of tissues made this not the place to be. She still plans on returning to us in the near future, though, so that's where we are on that front. So, cheers!


After our usual 2 false-alarm forecasts, we had our first snow on Thanksgiving, which was pretty and went away after a few days. Molly-dog and the kids were ecstatic. I was cooking. So, cheers!


After 7 months, my favorite road re-opened, "New! and Improved!". Before all the grading and paving and levelling and all, it had been this thrilling roller coaster that, if you theoretically (ahem) exceeded the speed limit, you could get the pit of your stomach to drop several times along it's length as you crested hills and plummeted down the other side. Yeah, sure, it was somewhere north of hazardous during a winter storm, but who the hell drives a roller coaster during a blizzard? That's when you take the interstate that's flatter and frequented by lots of snow plows. Now, while not flat, the high hills and big drops are gone, which is sad. I'm assuming it's still pretty (one of my favorite places on Earth is along this road: a bucolic pasture where cows graze and calves gambol and a stream wanders through it) but as it's dark when I drive in and dark when I drive back, It's going to be a while before I see more than the newly installed guard rails with their high-visibility reflectors. The whole thing has the feeling of a top-secret military landing strip. (Remember, this is waaaay out in the country where we don't believe in such wussy things as street lights. The moon and the stars were good enough for our fore bearers, so that should be good enough for us. If you're stupid enough to be out on a moonless, starless night, well, you just deserve what you got coming. Plus, most of the dark months are accompanied by a nice, reflective blanket of snow, which should be more than enough for the team of horses pulling your sleigh to see by, right Half Pint?)


Still and all, it's good to have the county road back, face lift and all. Trims a good five minutes off our commute each way. So, cheers!


For some reason, I'm just not in the holiday spirit right now. I've dragged out a few decorations (and by "few" I mean "3"). Santa has ordered a few things online but hasn't the slightest interest in trotting off on Rudolph to an actual store. This is very odd as I'm usually a Christmas fool. Good thing we've got a few more days this year. I'm thinking I'm going to need them.


As of yesterday, I think we've finished Lousefest '07. The last dousings of Rid were done. The final combings of the locks were clear. The microscope was returned from the counter of our bathroom to it's rightful place, the microscope-shaped space in the dust on my son's desk. Well, it's mostly done. The toys and such in the plastic bags in the garage still have a week to go, but think of how happy we'll be to see them. Sort of like a mini Christmas at the start of December! Maybe that's my problem. I'm missing my wood-handled, soft-bristled hairbrush. The nasty-assed cheap-o hard plastic brush that I found at the back of Charles's drawer is so cruel to my delicate scalp. The kids are well-versed on the evils of coming into contact with any spare hats or hairs of anyone else on the planet. They now don't even flinch when I leap out at them from various closets and doorways shouting, "True or false! We never, never, upon pain of death, even if it's 180 degrees below and we've forgotten our own hats put someone else's hat on our head?!?" More importantly, they get the answer to the question right with 100% accuracy.


I'm also positively giddy at the thought of not dealing with 2-3 times the amount of laundry in the course of a week and am looking forward to not having to make my kids' beds more than once a month. (Hey. They're little. They don't stink. Much.) So, cheers!


Sara's first kid birthday party went well. It was apparently the first birthday party for several of the little girls in her class and quite the social event of the season. The pinata was an especially brilliant touch, as it took up lots of time in first, getting everyone in their coats and shoes, then trotting them out and around the back of the house, where we'd hung the damn thing from the balcony (it was a large, pink crown. I'm regretting it wasn't a huge Dora The Explorer head or something equally despised) and then giving each kid multiple whacks with first, a soft bat, and then a hard plastic bat and finally, a hefty stick, until one girl had enough and took it to pieces. Go her! Then more time was spent with all the gathering of the candy and putting it in their bags and then going inside and shedding coats and shoes and all. Basically, with the pizza before and the cake and presents after, that was the whole damn party! Double cheers!!


Colin's birthday is in a few weeks and none of us, including the birthday boy, himself, can decide on a party idea. In a few years, he'll be old enough to do the planning himself. I'm secretly hoping he'll go my route of least bother and just have a family party from 5th grade on. And if he doesn't decide on that, I'm thinking a well-placed bribe may swing things in my lethargic favor.


I just don't do parties well. Guess that's one more thing for their future therapy sessions.


Speaking of which, that may be an idea for Christmas: Therapy gift certificates as stocking stuffers. That and journals in which to write down all my parental failings, birthday parties and all. I get why children's party planners are in business. I can see the appeal of just pulling out a check book (or applying for a bank loan) each year to give Junior a lovely birthday without ripping parts of your soul out to do it. I'm even dreaming of googling the location of the nearest Chuck E. Cheese, which goes to show the depths of my desperation. I won't actually do it, mind, as that'd take effort, but I'm dreaming of it.


And the furry ones? How are they now that they've turned 2? Very much the same. Mad-Kitty still has the propensity of getting herself shut in drawers and not meowing for release (meaning we still get to literally comb the house at 10 pm after we've gone to bed and realize that not only is she not in her usual place, curled up next to me, but we've not seen her for hours). Molly-dog still loves everyone and pees at any bit of praise or censure. A few days ago, Charles was dismayed to find her at the study window watching the UPS guy deliver a package. She was not barking (like any respectable German Shepherd). She was not even just watching. She was wagging her tail so hard that her body was moving back and forth, her ears flat to her head, whining in excitement that here, at last, was someone new! Someone she might possibly get to go out to greet and pee all over the shoes of, just to, you know, demonstrate her adoration and all. And, by the way, if here were interested, show where we keep my grandmother's silver and the stereo equipment. Clearly we need another dog if home security is a concern. We'd wanted a Shepherd who was submissive and non-agressive, but this is ridiculous.


And, finally, there've been no further zombie squirrel sightings on the UW campus, and I never did get that caramel latte, with or without the ricotta.


So that's the state of my Union. Yours?

Haikus for Fucking Lice

"Mom, my head itches."
We think nothing of this phrase;
we eat our dinner.

But after, I look:
combing through his lovely hair
with my sure fingers.

Huh. What the fuck's that?
He has stuff stuck in his hair.
Probably some food.

Think I'll trot off to
his room, find the microscope,
and make up a slide.

(Best Christmas present,
I'll tell you, very handy
to have for such things.)

Damn. The specimen
seems to have vanished off the
tip of my finger.

Another sample.
A slide. Then a cover slip.
Eye peers through the lens.

Fuck. It's wriggling there.
Trapped beneath the cover slip.
Nowhere else to go.

(Sorta cool, though.
I can see my son's blood move
through his intestines.

That's why they don't let
me go out much in polite
company. I'm weird.

I find icky, gross
disease states and such horrid
vectors kinda cool.)

Hurriedly, I go
through the instructions for the
eradication.

I beat back the urge
to race to the car and drive
to a pharmacy.

Tomorrow morning
will be soon enough to get
pediculocides.

Barkeep, set 'em up!
Nix all 'round for each of us.
Kill the fuckers dead.

I don't care if it's
not necessary to treat
if it's not on you.

So, tomorrow we
will procure a case of it;
soak 'til we are prunes.

Then we'll spend the rest
of the weekend combing hairs,
all in a circle.

Who's to blame for this?
Who knows? Smart money's on the
friendly neighbor's kid.

So, now we are all
itching with imagined blood-
sucking parasites.

Don't share hats or combs
or coats. (Don't play football with
the damn neighbor kid.)

For Sara, Turning Five

Ah, my beautiful girl, now you are five.


Once again, I sit in staggered awe at the person you are. Somehow you are much older than your years, yet still retain the adorable wonderment that is the stamp of one of your age. You see what others are doing around you and don't even question if you can do it, too. You just do what the rest of us are doing.


We all read. Therefore, you decided to read. Really read. Real words. You made the hair on the back of my neck stand up a couple of weeks ago when we cracked open that wonderful thing that is a brand new book. (In this case, what has become your favorite of the past 2 weeks, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid Of Anything.) Curled up in the rocking chair in your room as part of your bedtime ritual, we opened it and, as I was curious, I started pointing to the words in turn on the first few pages. Damned if you didn't read 80% of the words cold. You'd been 'reading' for ages, but as it'd been books we'd read over and over and over and over, I just figured you were reciting.


Nope.


When you were helping me with the wash (and may I just say what a large help you are, my best girl, always willing to help with the dusting and the toting of the laundry and the dumping of the flour into the batter) last weekend, you then read all the words describing the laundry settings on the washer. Well, almost all of them; 'delicate' gave you pause.


You also can do your 1+ and 2+ additions, which you learned from your brother being quizzed one day. I guess what gets me is that you can just do stuff that we don't realize you can do because you don't make a huge fanfare out of it.


Which doesn't mean you are not a drama queen, though. Noooooooooooooo. You can throw a fit with the best of them over the smallest (one might even say 'non-existent') thing. Your stubbornness is also legendary. You will forgo candy and popcorn and playing Guitar Hero in your refusal to eat a bite of your dinner. A dinner, I might add that is not composed of meatloaf, beets and liver with onions, but grilled chicken, salad and pasta. And you used to eat absolutely everything I put before you. You will even insist that you are tired and need to go to bed at 6:30 pm rather than eat your nice dinner, and then proceed to go to bed, sitting there happily reading and singing to your dolls and animals until you fall asleep 2-3 hours later.


Lord, help us when you are 15. (And there is no way in hell that you are moving downstairs to the basement bedroom. No way in hell. We are either putting you in your brother's room, which is right across from our room, or installing you in our closet through your high school years.)


You love to play ball sports and are rather good at them, unlike me. You must get that from your dad. You also love to draw and paint and anything else of that ilk, which you do at the kitchen counter while I fiddle with the food. It's lovely.




You are warm, generous and very empathetic. You are tough in some ways but a small bump on the leg will be grist for conversation for days. You will not take medication for any amount of love or money or loss of privileges. This makes it particularly difficult when your fever is over 104, let me tell you. I blame most of my gray hairs on those times.



You are very protective of your idol, your big brother. I am suspicious that a lot of the things you've accomplished have been because you admire and want to do what he does so much. Good taste in your role models.

Starting school has gone better than I had expected, thanks to your amazing teacher, the fabulous Mrs B., who was Colin's 5K teacher. A wild woman at home, you are very shy around people you don't know. The first several weeks were hard on you, especially because you really do still need an afternoon nap most days. You've adjusted, though, as we knew you would. You are making friends nicely and are thrilled with the thought of your first 'real' birthday party, with a pinata and pizza and, of course, cake. Your dad and I were particularly thrilled with your choice of cake: Chocolate with chocolate and chocolate. And roses. (Just like Robert the Rose Horse, natch.)

But best of all, to me, is that you still love to be with me; you want me to sit with you on the couch and "cuddle" with a book or a game. You want me to hold your hand in the parking lot or walking through the house (the latter can be difficult if my arms are full of laundry or crap or dishes). You want me to read to you before bed and color with you in the kitchen.


And that makes me the luckiest one of all.

This morning, at 5am, I woke to you singing "Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday toooooooo meeeeee....."

Happy birthday, indeed, my best girl. May this year be filled with happiness and wonder, just like you.

Act II

Of course, you knew how this was going to play out. Our heroine finally gets on some drugs that start her finally on the road to recovery and the blush of health, when her adored offspring decide to do their rather impressive impression of viral surround-sound.

To get the full effect, it works best to recline one child on the love seat, the other on the couch; positioning yourself between them, lounging in the Big Chair.

To the tune of Strauss's The Blue Danube:

"Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough!"
"Hack, hack. Hack, hack."
"Cough, cough, cough, cough,COUGH!"
"Hoik, hoik. HOIK. HOIK!"
"Cough, cough, cough, cough, cooooooough, snort, snort, snort!"
"Wheeze, sneeze, wheeze. Wheeze wheeze. Sneeze, sneeze!"
(Snort, snort.)

If you are me, and find yourself crammed in the Big Chair between the two plagued ones, though, you will get to experience the extra sensory bonuses of surround-tactile-enhancement. This is sort of like those seats that are set up to vibrate with the movie for more realistic involvement with the theater experience.

But instead of merely shaking the seat with the coughing, you have the bilateral waves of heat giving you the impression of being in the Sahara. Add in the multi directional showers of phlegm and snot, and it will make you feel that maybe it's not the dry dessert of the Sahara so much as the hot, humid Amazon rain forest, and that maybe the horrible sounds are the mating calls of the very rare Giant Speckled Tree Toad.

Put the film, "Amazon" on the TV and you are in for a multi-sensory experience that people would pay good money for.

(In case you were wondering if I was harboring any guilt over giving my kids my illness, I will rush to deny that I did any such thing as the incubation period would have been 2 +1/2 weeks (too long for it to be my fault, thank goodness) and that their crud seems quite different from mine. So. Not My Fault and I think it'd stand up in court.)

Sadly, tomorrow is "School Picture Day", which they are almost certain to miss. This means that it all comes down to "Picture Retake Day" to get it right for the picture frames of the extended family. (School pictures are one of the staples to be sent as one of the Christmas/Hanukkah presents as well as being tucked into holiday greeting cards to our nearest and dearest.) One doesn't care to waste School Picture Day, especially if one's youngest can't seem to get the idea that for a nice picture one needs to both smile and open her eyes. She either looks like she wants to take your head off or she's doing her rather brilliant Stevie Wonder impression, sans dark glasses: eyes shut, dreamy smile, head tilted back and to the side.

So, as you can see, I was rather counting on the option of the picture retake.

And finally, send your very best hopes that poor Charles knows when to breathe and when to run from the room covering his mouth and nose, as I think his days of good health are numbered and the one thing certain to make his already crazy-busy life as grad-student and middle-school principal (not to mention father, husband and chief dog-tire-er-out-er) is to get good and sick.

Now is not the time, bugs. You hear???

Remiss

Yesterday marked a large day in my little universe and yet I let it slide past without immortalizing it in the form of a post.

Sara started school yesterday.

I now have entered into that stage of parenting where I can legally toss my progeny to a state sanctioned institution for 5 hours a day (including bus transit time).

I now have time alone in my house.

Let me repeat that last sentence: I. Now. Have. Time. Alone. In. My. House.

For those of you without small children, you may not fully grasp the hallowed nature of those words.

For almost 9 years, I have had at least one small person with me constantly, unless I'm at work, going to work, or coming home from work. They have been with me in the bathroom. In the closet. Even in the cupboard under the sink where I once tried to grab 5 minutes of 'alone time', wedged between a box of steel wool pads and a petrified banana peel that had escaped the garbage. In one way, it's delightful. I adore my kids and think the sun rises out of their heads in the morning and sets in their behinds at night.

I am also someone who craves time alone.

And now I have it.

For the last year or so, I have met the thought of handing off my youngest child to school with a slight lump in my throat, truth be told. I had quite a time doing so with Colin. He was so small getting on the big, yellow bus all alone. I do miss the small-handed ones when they are away from me and I thought that when the day came to hand Sara off to school, I'd have at least a few tears prickling my eyes, possibly even stooping to openly sobbing.

Nope. I loaded her in the car yesterday, drove us down to school, trotted her down to her class, passed her off to the fabulous Mrs B (who was Colin's beloved kindergarten teacher), kissed her soundly on the cheek and headed for the door. The car keys dancing in my fist.

Free.

Alone.

Or at least I would have been alone, had the repair guy not been waiting at home, trying to fix the satellite and dismantling Charles's rather complicated theater system for much of the afternoon. ("So. What channel does the TV have to be on to get the satellite?" "The one it was already set to." "Oh. I changed some things around." "Well. You're on your own, buddy. Here's Charles's work number. I don't touch that shit.")

But today, there are no repair guys scheduled. There are no errands I am running (sadly, I'm still sickly. Actually getting more sickly. But I'm getting more antibiotics; bigger, better antibiotics, so things WILL be looking up in the future. At some point. Yes?) and I have plans to wear the fabric of the sofa cushions bare with my lounging ALONE for 5 hours, this afternoon. If someone rings the doorbell, they'd better be delivering a large box of chocolates, otherwise I shall cough purulent goo all over them and wither them with my glare of contempt.

And Sara? How is she doing with being abandoned by me? Heh. By 8:00 this morning, she was asking for her lunch, (she'd had her breakfast an hour before) as she knows she gets to get on the bus to go to school after lunch.

I think she's ready for this as well.

In Which I take Leave Of My Senses

I present living proof of my insanity:

Paper mache.

Really.


In my kitchen. Dripping on my table. Puddling on my floor (which, thank God, is a faux-marbled paper-mache colored ceramic). Coating each of us.


See, I'm home with the little angels for 2 whole weeks. Actually, what with the Labor Day weekend at the end and the fact that I only work the first 1/2 of each week, it's a day shy of 3 weeks. Our lovely summer sitter, C, had to selfishly get her little self off to college the middle of the month and modern society frowns upon 8 year olds and 4 year olds being taken care of by adolescent dogs, no matter how good their intentions are.


Desperate to find something for us to do to take up a rainy morning on a day that was not my time-honored favorite "Let's Clean The House For Money, Kids!" Day, I agreed to have us make pinatas.


Yes. I am agreeing to do crafts.


I am not in the least little bit craft-y. Nothing personal, I just never saw the point. Knitting, sure. There's a use for that sweater. But a Popsicle stick napkin holder? Not even as a kid did I see that as anything but crap. (I was a shitty Girl Scout.) I apparently lack the gene. It must be next to the one on the "X" chromosome that confers the desire for expensive designer bags, which I also lack.


So, we blew up the balloons, and then made a quart of flour-based glue, which we dredged strips of paper in and plastered all over balloons. Which then had to drip-dry, indoors, so they wouldn't become large fly strips.



Here they are, dangling over the kitchen table where only a few pet indoor flies were present (drip, drip, drippity-drip).


Then they were tissue papered and painted. And glued and glittered.


Actually, when he realized that we WOULDN'T be filling them full to bursting with bags and bags of candy and then whacking them open and then stuffing ourselves on the bags and bags of candy, Colin rather lost interest and decided his would be an "egg". An undecorated chicken egg. (I owe him a pony or a car for that.) His is, of course, on the right.

Sara, however, took full advantage and glued and painted and glittered hers extravagantly. I am still finding green sparkles in odd places on my person, despite having had more than one shower since then. I'm not sure what Sara's pinata is. Neither is she. But it sheds the carefully applied glitter nicely, so I'm thinking it's a kindergartner from the egg dimension. Or a grade-school art teacher, from the planet Ovoid.

Today, we used the morning splitting my psyche in two as I attempted to fulfill the school supply requirements of both kids' teachers simultaneously at the local Shopko.

For some reason Sara must have a box of 8 crayons that are not the 'jumbo size', but the 'regular size'.

As far as I can tell, they make the box of 'regular sized' crayons 16 or 32 or larger and the box of 8 crayons 'jumbo sized', but not what is required. I'm thinking they can take the box of 16 and lump it. She also needs a box of 'pipsqueak markers' as she is a girl. What the fuck? The boys have to bring paper plates.

Seems like the parents of daughters, who will be subjected to multiple bizarre fashion demands over the years, should be the ones to bring the simple paper plates and the parents of the boys, who for the next several years will be happily dressed in a uniform of jeans and t-shirts, get to find the 'pipsqueak markers'.

Or maybe the teachers figure that the parents of girls need the practice.

Oh. I also realized that all the pairs of jeans I bought Colin are the wrong size. But that's OK. I can use up another morning exchanging them.

I think I don't have enough beer in the house.

No.

I know I don't have enough beer in the house.

Thing I Never Thought I'd Need To Tell My Child Not To Do #46,908

As I happened by the bathroom, today, in the throes of our weekly cleaning frenzy, I noticed that the toilet lid seemed to have grown a tumor.

Halting in my tracks, load of laundry on my hip, leaning back to have another look, I noticed that my son was laughing and showing me what could be done with his sister's toothbrush!

As I stood there, gaping, trying my level best to make sense of what I was seeing, he did the only thing an 8 year-old boy could do: He closed the toilet lid.

"Look Mom! See! Sara's toothbrush even sticks to the toilet lid!"

I grabbed the errant brush and whinged it into the trash.

Completely aghast and nonplussed, I asked my son, "Can you tell me why that's inappropriate?"

"Um....," grin fading from his face, "Because I was wasting time screwing off, instead of cleaning the bathroom?" he ventured.

Time for the Serenity Prayer

Her: "Is it me or is the air conditioning louder than what I remembered from last year?"

Him: "Sounds louder."

A few hours later....

rattlerattlerattleRATTLE...rattlebang, rattleboom, RATTLEBOOM, RATTLEBOOM, BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMCRASH! (silence, silence, cricket-chirping silence)

Her: "I think it's dead."

Him: "I'll call in the morning."

Of course, you know that the mercury is over 90 F. And the humidity is close to that.

.............................

So off to bed we go, hours later, all ceiling and box fans whirling away. Dog in front of the screen by the decklet off our bedroom. Cat nowhere near her usual place on the body pillow next to me. I think she found a way to open the door to the freezer and curl up around the ice cream. Either that or she's fled to the basement.

You remember small Sara, right? Sara "mommy-I-need-to-sleep-with-you-yes?". Sara "but-when-your-light-is-off-I-can-sneak-into-bed-with-you-yes?".

Last night, after each variation of the above queries was answered with a flat "NO" or a "No, honey, daddy really, really, needs his sleep and when you are there, he gets literally kicked out to the couch and then he is all stiff and sore and his back bends at all the wrong angles."

Of course, a short while after I fell into sticky, fitful slumber, I wake to find a small furnace curled on top of the pillows, between our heads. I evict the small furnace back to her own bed and fall back into what passes for sleep, listening to small sniffles from the other room. Of course, the next morning, I am hit by new guilt. See, the poor dog has been evicted from her place on the carpet by the screen by the small girl in pink kitty pyjamas.

Who is now sleeping in the middle of our bed.

What can you do?

...............................

And then there's the neighbor's dog, well, one of the neighbor's dogs. She's a very sweet yellow lab, about a year old, very jumpy, very knock-you-over, very poor manners, who looooooves to come over and play. Normally, I don't mind. She and Molly have a grand old time racing around the yard for hours at a time, stopping to do doggy things, like sniff critter poop and stick their noses into the various burrows, but now that it's hot, the kids are out there with their slidey-pool. Molly knows that only BADDOGS go into the pool and only BADDOGS steal the inflatable sliding board and only BADDOGS try to bite the side of the pool. Sadly, Bailey is a baddog. And baddogisms are contagious.

So, Charles gets to go over to the neighbor and see about getting him to keep his damned baddog in his own yard. Molly will be sad, but she won't succumb to the dark side and hopefully the pool will last more than a week, having avoided being punctured by baddog teeth and nails.

And how was your weekend?

Haikus for Mommy Guilt

Such a silly girl.
Dressed in jammie tank and shorts
Cute but not so warm.

Yet you feel the need
To join us in the wee hours,
Leaving your warm bed.

We find you curled
There, at the foot of our bed
Like some hairless cat.

You don't plan ahead,
Leaving all your blankets there,
Piled on your own bed.

Tucked in your arm, though,
One stuffed animal to hold
Against the night's chill.

So there I find you,
Small and shivering and so
Very sound asleep.

I grab you by the
Arms and haul you up by me
Where it's nice and warm.

I spend the rest of
The night bent in bizarre shapes,
Curled around your form.

I then wake and try
To walk, the pretzel woman
Gimps to the bathroom

I'm sure it's not a
Coincidence that you've done
This since I left you.

Clearly, 4 days gone
From me has left you worried
That I'd not come back.

And so, nightly, here
You come, to make sure I'm still
Here in the morning.

Guess the solution
Is to bring you with me on
All trips from now on.

There we'll be, at the
conference, me, eighty-three,
You can be my cane.

Fabulous! (At Least In The Eyes Of My Son)

Mother's Day, I think, has become my very favorite day of the year.

See, it's the day that I get to see what glorious offerings my son bestows upon me to show his love on this day. He has divine, imaginative teachers and has presented me 2 years ago with the infamous Mom Poem (scroll to the bottom of the post for the brilliance). Last year was the fabulous still life card and "Mom ABCs" handmade hardcover book (again, to the bottom of the post). This year! Oh, this year, we have the splendid portrait of ME! done in construction paper, wrapping paper, yarn and crayon, (life sized)!



Take in the glorious accuracy: The lank, brown hair (never could do a damn thing with it). The tilt of the head demonstrating my infinite patience with the use of "butt" and "poop" 5 times in a single sentence. Look in the eyes to see the expression of love and devotion to my offspring. The lips, it must be said, are artistic license, as I do not have 'pillow lips' either naturally or collagenally.



I also had no idea I looked that good in plaid and will go in search of some forthwith.

The portrait also accompanied a soft-cover book entitled "I Love You More! retold by Colin", in which, across 7 illustrated pages, he tells me how he loves me 'more than the biggest garden you seen' and 'the greatest trip you ever bin (sic)' and 'the neatest room you ever seen'.

Can you see why this puts Christmas and my birthday to shame?

'Hallmark Holiday', indeed.

Fie.

(P.S.: I am truly working on the travels of me, Down Cajun way, but it is planting season here and the clock is a ticking and there's not all that much to tell, not that I won't take far too long in the telling of it. Gimme a couple of days.)

Rite Of Passage

The words we dread but know are inevitable:


Sara (from the living room): "Mom! Guess What?"

Diana (from the kitchen): "What's that, honey"

Sara: "I just cut my HAIR with the SCISSORS!"

Diana: (gulp) "Oh dear."

Yes, she did, indeed.

In retrospect, giving her bangs a trim followed by letting her help me cut the tags off her new summer clothes and then popping off to the kitchen to put the kettle on, leaving the scissors on the table was not the wisest series of events. How could she resist?

The scissors are now on top of my dresser.

Sara is very, very sorry.

I've tried not to laugh, but it's really, really hard.

We've all done it, right? I did. Age of 8. Cut a hunk of my bangs off at the hairline. The hunk that was hanging down in my eyes when I was trying to read. Sadly, what I'd cut off was right over my cowlick. Dad tormented me for ages calling me "Dagwood" as the hair growing in stuck straight up for ages.

And so, Sara has given herself a modified left-sided mullet.

Thankfully, she has 5 months until school pictures.

And I have 5 months to mock.

Babies Having Babies

I am, it seems, a Grandma.

I'm a little thrown by this unforeseen development, thinking that this was something that was about 20 years in the future, if it was something that was to be at all, but life throws us curve balls.

It all started innocently enough with Sara's check-up on Friday. She was seeing her new pediatrician, Dr H, who I know and like, personally and professionally. She is a worthy replacement for the fabulous Dr P, if anyone can be said to be worthy.

I set Sara up for this a day or two in advance, as springing something on Sara that does not involve zoos or chocolate is not quite the wise thing.

Everything seems fine until we are called back and my darling daughter, who is not a shrinking violet under normal circumstances, turns into a 40 lb tumor on my right thigh, face pressed to my jeans as I waddle down the hall with a rather bemused look on my face.

The nice peds nurse tries her best to get Sara to warm up to her, and has some success in that Sara complies with getting on the scale and standing up straight for her height and so on.

We are then left alone to get her into one of those little kid gowns and await "Mommy's friend, Dr H".

Sara decides to sit on my lap for the wait. We chat. It's nice.

With the knock on the door, Sara is suddenly overcome with African Sleeping Sickness. It's phenomenal. She slumps in my lap, her head against my chest, eyes resolutely closed, softly snoring in a very unconvincing manner.

Dr H looks at me strangely.

Sara continues to feign sleep.

Dr H asks the usual questions and tries to believe me when I describe my little chatterbox and wild-woman.

Sara continues to feign sleep.

Both of us shrugging, the physical exam commences.

Sara continues to feign sleep, despite a trial of tickling under the arms and the soles of the feet. She does not even flinch. She opens her mouth on command (and her eyes for the 2 seconds necessary to check her pupils).

We consider the diagnosis of locked-in syndrome.

It is the easiest exam poor perplexed Dr H will have all day, we are sure.

After all this, I ask Sara to please open her eyes as I have something important to discuss with her: The Shot Talk. I explain she will get 5 (yes, 5! containing a total of 9 separate vaccines) shots and that it will hurt, but not for long and that I will hold her and it will be over soon. She is asked what her favorite color is for a bracelet that she will receive as a prize for going through all this.

"Violet," is her answer.

Not 'purple'.

She is very, very brave with all the painful shots. She cries silently with big tears that splash on my arm, but doesn't pull away very much. I feel like total shit, of course, but try to console myself with how much shit I'd feel like if she came down with measles or tetanus or hepatitis A or any of the other 6 maladies.

She is told she is the bravest of kids and is given not one, but 2 different violet bracelets, a violet heart-shaped ring, a rubber duck with a princess crown, bubbles in a violet container and a pencil (alas, blue). We head out for lunch to celebrate her bravery and to stop at the pharmacy to fill her fluoride prescription. It is there that my fatal mistake is made.

Remember that I am now a Grandma?

Oh yes.

She got to pick out a toy for her bravery. (Yes, I spoiled her. I did this completely intentionally. I don't want her to remember the shots, I want her to remember the good stuff she got. This should be the last time she needs so many shots unless she goes off to the Peace Corps, and should that be the case, it'll be her own fault and she'll just have herself to blame. In my defense, this is the only time I've done this for her. Colin also got some very nice presents when he got his appendix out and was so terribly brave through all that pain. I do believe bravery in the very young deserves to be re-enforced strongly and with more than words. So there. Sue me.)

And what did she choose? Not one of the art things. Not a game. Nope.

You guessed it: A new doll.

And not just any doll. A baby doll that cries and giggles and burps. (Oh! the glee those burp sounds cause. Oh! The hundreds and hundreds of times that poor baby has had to fraaaap. A baby doll that starts to fuss and then loudly cry if you just let it sit and ignore it. (You stop the crying by stuffing a bottle in its demanding little mouth.)

Sara, for her part, is not a bad baby doll mother. She has given it tons of attention, never leaving its side, even waking it when it finally gives up and 'sleeps'. (Clearly Sara's not learned my Rule #1 of Motherhood: NEVER WAKE A SLEEPING BABY.)

This extended to her hollering to me from the toilet as she demanded that I "Take Baby," so she could wipe and wash her hands.

Which is why I found myself holding Baby in my arms, doing the Mommy bouncy-walk, while I kicked the laundry basket down the hall, to an intense feeling of deja vu.

This has continued for most of the weekend. Finally, last night, Sara decided that Baby needs to just 'cry it out' and things were quiet.

And so, I am left to ponder my ascension to Grandmahood, something that is especially ironic given my work at the local Health Department in the Family Planning Clinic, doing my level best to prevent pregnancy in other people's kids.

I really hope this trend doesn't continue, as I am also Medical Director of the Health Department's STD clinic. If it does, I hope it's something curable, say with that new HPV vaccine.

I'm thinking I should push for her to get it at her Kindergarten physical. And, I'll be damned if I'm getting up with Baby if she cries at night. Sara had the kid, she can have all of that fun. As it is, she keeps trying to pass her off on me while she takes over bedtime reading responsibility.

Grandmas are too old for that shit.

For Colin, Turning 8

And so, my best guy, it is your birthday. You've turned 8. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but that's not anything new. I'm often taken by surprise by such things.

Not by your birthday party, of course, which required my usual fretting and stressing over how to achieve high levels of FUN! among eight 8 year olds. (Which, I think we pulled off quite well, if I do say so myself.) There was a solid 2 hours of a wall of sound from the constant shouting of you and your friends.

Some might have said that immediately arming your friends with inflatable light sabers (that really light up!) as welcome gifts would have been a regrettable error in judgment, but it actually worked out well. You all occupied yourselves by running up and down the stairs and through the house playing a complicated version of Star Wars. Nothing broke and you burned a scootch of energy.



Some of you also had loud pistols. After a couple of more loud games and some very noisy pizza, presents (which included that loud, talking Darth Vader flashlight), cake and more hollering, we threw your coats on you and tossed you outside to run around the yard with your new weapons. 8 eight year olds with 8 light sabers on 8 acres of land is a lovely sight to see from inside, through the window. Your brave dad chaperoned all that, smiling evilly as he handed your muddy, armed, sugar infused friends off to their folks at the end.

I really like your friends. They are, to a person, nice and polite. Several of them are wonderfully quirky. I think you will have several lifelong friends and I can't wait to see you all grow up together. No. Strike that. I can certainly wait. It's all going too fast as it is.

You are such a splendid person, you see. Makes sense that you would have such good kids as friends.



You just make me so proud. Not only are you a nice, polite kid, but it's been the biggest thrill to watch you learn. Seems every other sentence starts, "Didn't you know..." and is followed by a fact, either true or false. But mostly true. It's hard to separate the truth from fiction when you're in 2nd grade, especially as some of the knowledge comes from the playground. And we all know what an infallible source of knowledge that is.

You are an honest guy. We are trying to teach you things like how to be polite when you are given something to eat that you don't really like. You now say that "It's not bad. It's not very good, but it's not bad." We're working on it.

You are soft spoken, unless at home or running with your friends. Your teachers are wanting you to speak louder in class. You raise your hand and volunteer but your answers are so soft. They all think you are a 'joy to have in class', though. That's code for a nice, easy, quiet kid. Like I was. Like your dad was.



Speaking of your dad, damn, but you look like him. Such a handsome kid. Little girls are already writing you notes. Especially A. We like A. She's strong, confident, very nice. And her handwriting is excellent.



You are good at reading and math. You don't care much about coloring within the lines, but do it to please people when they ask you. Otherwise, who cares. You hate to write with the depths of your being. That's OK. I hated to write until a few years ago.



You love computer/video games. Especially real-time strategy games like Warcraft and Age of Empires. You also win them. You're not supposed to be doing that for a decade or so.

You want to please. Usually. Punishment for you would to be to tell you that I was disappointed in you. Or to make you write. Perhaps if I were to make you write about me being disappointed in you for the ultimate punishment, say if you took the car tomorrow and drove it to Florida.



You are very interested in rocks. And geology. You are getting a crystal growing set for Christmas and rock tumbler, so you can polish your collection, for your birthday. You are also getting a microscope for Christmas, so you and I can look at things like pond scum and stuff. This is what you get for having a science nerd for a mom.

You are incredibly patient with your sister. You are mostly really good to her. Mostly. Let's face it, when she's in a mood, she can drive anyone round the twist.



Best of all, you still love me. I know this won't always be the case, but you tell me so on a daily basis, without prompting or leading.

And that's the best thing of all.



So happy birthday, best guy in the world. You make my heart sing.