What Bear? You Ask

May 7, 2008

This bear. Right before it picked up my garbage can and stomped on it so all the garbage came flying out. I am so tired of cleaning up garbage every morning. Tonight I took the black bag out of the garbage can and put it into my van for the night. It should smell delightful in there come morning. I am trying to decide if the trade off is worth it. I guess I will know in the morning.

Hello there, bear.

This is the “girl” bear. See her earrings?

We also have an untagged bear that comes to visit us. That is the “boy” bear according to my daughter, the ultimate authority of boy/ girl signifiers.

My blog has been down behind the scenes since Monday. I guess it had been sleeping around and not using protection because it contracted a silent but deadly STD. There was much gnashing of teeth and rending of clothing.

Thank you all for the birthday wishes. I read all of them but unfortunately many were lost in the antibiotic/ Lysol frenzy. So if your comment has disappeared don’t take it personally.

Thirty-Nine

May 5, 2008

I was out early this morning running, or more accurately flailing my limbs and gasping for air. For about 20 seconds I got what it is that people like about running. The sun was shining, may hair was flying behind me in the breeze. In the shadows you couldn’t see that my grey roots are showing and I looked to be about 6ft tall with spindly long legs.

I had borrowed my 7 yr old son’s ipod, because I don’t have one of my own. And as I was making my way back home the R.E.M. song Driver 8 came on. For a moment I was 19 again running along the Charles River.

Only back then I was was carrying a walkman and I would have to stop and flip the cassette over at some point. I would be running home to a crowded apartment where I would likely be handed a cigarette and a beer before I even reached the couch. We were in that weird place of our lives. Not still children, not yet grown -ups, though we often felt we were. We had little real world responsibilities. Our lives were a completely blank canvas and most of my friends had no idea what they wanted to do next week, never mind for the rest of our lives. College majors had not yet even been declared for the first time.

I remember one afternoon my friend Katie and I were talking about what we imagined our lives to be twenty years in the future. You know, when we were old. We reasoned we would both be married and have a kid or two (Turns out I was always an overachiever.) We wondered who our spouses would be. Where would we live, other than next door to each other, of course. What we would be when we grew up– all the way up. Somehow it didn’t seem incongruous to have deep life discussions in between rounds of bouncing a quarter into a glass of warm beer.

I’m not sure what I imagined my life would be like all those twenty years ago. But I don’t think it was this. I couldn’t have imagined the juggling of conference calls, baseball games, or the very idea of email. I had no idea what a crockpot was or that I should buy stock in granola bars and string cheese.

Today I ran up the driveway, the music of my freshman college year playing in my head. I grabbed the baseballs that were laying in the front yard. I paused before I came in the back door to pick up the garbage that the bear had once again strewn all over the yard. I could hear loud laughter inside, punctuated by squealing. I closed the open door on the minivan, saying a small prayer that the battery wouldn’t be dead. I entered the kitchen and was promptly shot by a Nerf gun. A little boy skates by me in the kitchen on his roller blades, his t-shirt proclaiming “I’m Mom’s Favorite,” which at the moment he definitely was not.

This is thirty-nine. This is what I am going to be when I grow up. Nothing like what I imagined.

And yet, it is pretty fucking amazing.

Learning to Ride

She has decided that she rather likes having a person push her around on her bike rather than using the training wheels. So much less effort involved on her part.

Being a Child is Serious Work

May 2, 2008

There is so much blank paper to color. And so little time.

Puppers the stuffed dog looks on. He has a boo-boo on his tail, hence the Dora bandage wrapped around it.

But not so serious that you can’t color in your teeth.

Far, I’ve been traveling far

May 1, 2008

I exceeded bandwidth last month. Oooops.

When I was in college I spent a summer in western Africa studying art. The culture shock was, well, shocking. Some things were hard to process because there was no framework for which to put the experiences into. And so some of the memories sort of hang out there in my brain, alone, until something triggers them and pulls them back to the forefront of my memory.

The other night we were watching American Idol when Neil Diamond came on. My older children groaned a bit. “Do you like that music?” one of them asked.

Rob answered, “Well, I don’t particularly love him. But your mother does. Ask her to sing his repertoire.”

I had to admit that Neil Diamond holds a special place in my heart.

On my last day on the African continent, ever since I have yet to go back, we were back in the city in our hotel room supposedly resting before our flight left. You have to remember that this was in the days before digital music, digital cameras, laptops, heck CDs were not even popular yet. So for this entire summer no one in our travel group had any access to music, news, messages from home.

The television had nothing on to watch other than state run programs that weren’t in English and a non-stop porn station. My friend Katie and I had turned it on and stood there gaped mouth until I finally turned to her and said, “I don’t even know what that is that they are showing.” She didn’t know either. Until they showed us a different camera angle. At which point we squealed and covered our eyes. Ah yes, back in the innocent dark ages when hard core porn was not available in everyone’s living rooms 24 hours a day.

The clock radio that was in our hotel room that last day was not so much a radio as it just played music in a continuous loop. There were several “channels.” I can’t remember what was playing on the other channels, but we preferred Neil Diamond over all of them. The song loop came around a few times and then one of us, not sure which one, began singing along. Next thing you know we were singing as loud as we could, and about as well as a typical American Idol contestant, which is to say not very well at all. We sang and danced and jumped on the beds through the loop a few times; eventually the hotel staff knocked on the door and told us to be quiet.

We listened to the loop a few more times and tried to sing along more quietly. But Neil Diamond demands to be belted out with overly dramatic enthusiasm.

Since then, Neil Diamond has always held a special place in my heart. I still know all the words to those songs by heart. And when I find myself scanning the radio in the car and one of them comes on, I have to stop and sing along. LOUDLY. (also badly and to the utter embarrassment of my children).

This would be why on Tuesday night you could have seen me singing karaoke style in my family room to Neil Diamond. And also why when it came time to vote one child said, “Well, I’m not voting for you that’s for sure.”

*****

Over at Parenting, my 10 yr old son has written an ambitious list of 101 things to do this summer. I share part of the list we have decided to do as a family.

At Work It, Mom! I have a roasted cauliflower recipe that I tried out to mixed children reviews. The adults in the house loved it.

The Bends

April 29, 2008

Once upon a time my son complained about his hip hurting. And he dramatically limped around the house. Because I like to play a doctor, I assured him that his hip (and then knee) hurt from playing so much baseball. It had been All-Star season and he was out there running, sliding, throwing balls, for hours every single day. Of course you would fee achy. Then he got worse and I brought him to the doctor. We had blood work done and had to wait for what felt like FOREVER to get the results. Turned out he had Lyme disease. I felt horrible. He took antibiotics for weeks (months?) and dropped 10lbs off of his then already skinny frame.

If you think that would have caused me to turn in my Google M.D. license, you would be wrong.

So more time passed. This time my son was complaining that his jaw hurt. Well, duh chewing all the gum will do that to you. What? You haven’t been chewing gum? Well clearly you are grinding your teeth at night or something. Don’t worry you will get better soon. Just lie down and take a nap. Sleep is always good for what ails you. The next day he could not open his mouth wider than a centimeter or two. I brought him to the doctor and he had tonsillitis and had developed some sort of secondary infection in his jaw. OUCH! He had some antibiotics and began to feel better. I drank some wine to soothe my guilt.

But still I could not turn in my medical degree.

Last week my son was complaining that he had a sore throat. He had no other symptoms of being sick. No fever, no cough, no stomach ache, nothing that stopped him from inhaling vast quantities of food. I chalked it up to allergies that are causing everyone to have sore scratchy throats. Yesterday afternoon he came to me and said it felt like there was something in his throat. I made him open his mouth and shined my handy pen light in. “Holy mother of god!” I shouted. He had a huge abcess in his throat. I almost fainted from looking at it. Off we went to the doctor. Turns out that this is a viral thing, so no medication is necessary. We ran a strep test just to be on the safe side. We are dosing him up with tylenol, numbing mouth rinse, and soft food.

Last night I was googling my own medical symptoms. I have diagnosed myself with decompression sickness. I realize I have not recently, or ever, been scuba diving. Small details.

Making a wish

April 27, 2008

Last week when I went to open the kitchen window for the first time this year I discovered two wishbones that I had saved from recent(ish) turkey dinners. I had put them up there to dry and apparently get very dusty. The kids were excited to finally make their wishes.

They squeezed their eyes tight. My 3 yr old son wished for a “big bike” and my daughter wished for a puppy.

Then she realized that she was left with the short side of the wishbone.

Luckily her brother loves her, more than he loves his wish. Or possibly he has no idea of what exactly a wish is. In any event he handed her his half of the wishbone.

“Here, you can have my wish.” he said.

And just as my heart was exploding in a million pieces, my daughter looked up at him and yelled, “BUT I DON’T WANT A STUPID BIKE!”

So busy

April 25, 2008

Seriously, I have been the sort of busy that leaves me incapable of doing anything but fretting about how busy I am and mentally tallying all of the things that I have to do in my head. Over and over again. And yet, mysteriously, doing none of them. It is a great system.

I have found the time to vacuum my entire downstairs.

And I have quiche. That has to count for something, right?

Quiche, It’s Not Just for Brunch Anymore

Buying into the hysteria

April 24, 2008

I replaced all our bottles two weeks ago with SIGG bottles. They took forever and a day to arrive. I think they rolled them here. I was half afraid that by the time the bottles got here there would be some new study pointing out the dangers of these particular water bottles.

Because this is it. I am not buying all new bottles again. Next they can go cup their hands outside in the rain for drinking water.

Five

April 21, 2008

We celebrated this weekend where she made her own cake (with help from Rob), a two layer triple chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and cherries on top. She was so proud of her cake. I have no good photos of the cake since my camera battery went DEAD and I couldn’t find the charger.

Since today was her actual birthday I picked up a small pink cake while I was at the grocery store. Can you celebrate a birthday too much? I don’t think so. Can you have too much cake? Definitely not.