P.S.: Thanks

I’ve been running around taking care of administrivia today.

So I’ve been, uh, praying an awful lot today. Mostly like this: “Oh, for GOD’S SAKE!”

Not to mention the occasional, “GOD BLESS AMERICA!” and possibly the sporadic “Dear God, why? Why?! WHY?!?!”

By the end of the day I was getting very tired, and very disorganized. In one of the most shocking developments of my entire life, I have somehow become a ‘morning person’.

I know.

I don’t know what to make of this either.

I used to absolutely be a night owl. Life began at about 4:30 in the afternoon and ended shortly before dawn. But at some point after Eldest arrived, I became one of those people who like to watch the sun rise, and found that I had energy first thing in the morning and then…slowly but surely…lost all but the most basic will to live by 4:30 in the afternoon.

The first cup of coffee in the morning is not nearly as vital to me at the 4:00 pick-me-up one. The first cup is spiritually satisfying. The 4:00 one is medically necessary.

So at 9:00 this morning I was busily calling contractors and organizing all the stuff that used to be in the built-in upstairs, and putting the finishing brushstrokes on the budget. Happy-busy-happy-busy.

By 3:30, I was fading fast and starting to yell, “CHRISTOPHER COLUMUBUS!!” about everything from sticky keyboards to having no blue pens (black pens, yellow pens, pink princess pens, NO BLUE ONES?! ARGH!!!!!) to my doctor being on {gasp! shock! horror!} vacation until next week. I mean! How dare the man go on vacation! I want to talk to him right now, mister! about Things. (Yeah, actually, DysdHousewife, you hit one of my major concerns in life right now: Mr. Vacation Pants prescribed a level of OTC drugs that I’m not comfortable with – I’m taking 1300 mg of Tylenol every six to eight hours, I’m getting a lot of the ‘unfun’ side effects and darn it, it ain’t workin’! I want to try something else now please, thank you).

I was fading so fast that 4:00 (which was when I meant to pickup the Denizens) (I have only one more day of paid-for childcare!) (aaaaaah!!!) came and went and I found myself saying morning-like things such as, “Just five more minutes…and also I wanted to make cookies…wait, or was that bread…?”

4:00 in the afternoon is not the optimum time to be starting a bread-baking experience. Rule of thumb is, it will take about three hours start to finish. So 4:00? Eh, not exactly ‘out of the question’ but definitely into ‘you will be dealing with this right in the middle of the Evening Madness’ realms.

Undaunted (and possibly temporarily insane), I started making bread.

Meanwhile, possibly due to the power of suggestion, my jaw has been throbbing like hot-holy-heck today. I don’t want to eat. I also don’t want to drink. I had half a gorgeous steak left over for lunch, and I couldn’t face it. Eh. How about some nice soup…I was starting to fret about how I’d feel by next Friday, the earliest appointment available to get this thing fixed.

Oh well, though. Whaddya gonna do? It isn’t like there are a whole lot of (devilishly handsome or otherwise) endodontists in town. It isn’t like a supermarket, you know, you don’t just say, “Oh my, no milk today? I’ll just dash off to any one of the fifteen other choices available to me!”

So really, it is what it is. No sense whining or worrying about it. One foot in front of the other, I said, and just be grateful you have all the blessings you have. Chill. Don’t worry, be happy. And also, get all that crap off the floor and back in the built-in.

So I carried on dealing with everything from getting a new screen on my laptop (I’m mobile once more! I’m so happy! Yay, Dell!!) to calling insurance companies about their rates and contractors about their licenses.

Finally, I made the last call. That’s it for today, I said grouchily. I’m out of here. Stupid what-nots and also I’m very tired of all this and besides…

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?

Yes. I still have my melodramatic streak. And if I were to ever actually believe that $DEITY had indeed abandoned me, it would probably be at 4:30 in the afternoon on a work day.

So just as I’m getting up to pick up the Denizens, my email !boinged!.

Can we help this friend?, my husband asked. So I hesitated long enough to dig into some cash I was hoarding up for a tech-toy I don’t really need (but kinda really want) to send over to the Cause.

Just as I was sending it, the phone rang and it was the hotel I had put a friend in for the night (I don’t reward-point-monger for nothing, people! If I can’t go, darn it, I want a friend to!). Though I had already done it, they wanted signed authorization. *sigh* OK. So I faxed and signed and sent and called and then they put her into the room. But I’m glad I was here for the call, which I only was because of this other friend needing a little help to get by.

Because it would have severely sucked for them to demand payment from her because they couldn’t reach me. The market price of the room is…kinda ludicrous, really.

So it’s all good. Glad I got delayed OH FOR CARP’S SAKE, the phone AGAIN?!?!

Dentist. How about tomorrow instead of next week?

Tomorrow is better. Much better. Tomorrow, we still have childcare available – so if mommy is passed out in drug-induced happy-place all afternoon, this is fine. And also, no Denizens will be tearing up the nice man’s waiting room. Which they otherwise would definitely be doing. Loudly.

As I hung up the phone, having gone from ‘on the early side’ to ‘almost late’, I realized that I had been about to walk out the door leaving two loaves of bread burning in the oven.

I just had to sit back and laugh. Right after, you know, I took the bread out of the oven.

$DEITY just always has my back, you know it? Especially in the hours when I’m furthest away, least aware of it, not paying attention, or otherwise feeling like nobody AND I MEAN NOBODY gives a Flying Fudgesicle (you don’t believe they fly? you haven’t spent any time in the Den, have you…) about me or anything about me.

First, I’m given easy opportunities to help friends and sometimes even complete strangers. I’m put in the right place at the right time with the right resources – it makes me so happy to have that ability. So many people have been there for me, it feels so great to finally be on the other side, able to give back a little of what I’ve gotten.

And then, I’m given a backhanded gift in the form of getting my surgery seven days sooner than otherwise planned.

Plus also, by the way, P.S. – you left the bread in the oven.

I often envision $DEITY as a kind of…tough-talking parent. Yeah, yeah, OK, so here’s this and that don’t forget blah and for My sake will you PLEASE stop being such a twit {SMACK!} upside the head and oh by the way you left the curling iron on. P.S.: I love you.

But, $DEITY! I want and I need and I feel and what and why and how !ARGH! and name-in-vain a few times…

…and P.S….

Thanks. For, you know, everything.

Dentistry in the 21st Century

Dentistry in the 21st Century

So there I was. Sitting, in the (I must say) extremely comfortable, plush chair. Trying not to fidget. Staring at a blown up x-ray of my tooth which showed, quite clearly and even to radiologically-impaired-me, the rather large-ish black hole around the roots of my tooth.

Which had already had a root canal. And also a surgical procedure done to cap the root the last time this infection erupted.

Uh, yeah. Sure. I, uh, I remember…

Well. I can tell you that I’ve had four root canals, but I don’t remember which one came first or last or whatever. I can tell you that I once had surgery to repair an issue with one of those root canals, and that one other root canal had to be ‘redone’ and that it hurt – a lot. And we will not discuss the time the tooth needing work was in such bad condition that he couldn’t get it really numb until after he got the top off the tooth.

So, I had not forgotten that I had oral surgery once to fix a…something-something that had done something blah blah infection something about root canals and oh yeah. I distinctly remember that it cost me $1,400.

This was fifteen years ago. $1,400 was about $1,399 more than I had to my name. I had to do installments for three years to pay it off. Ugh.

But, with the help of the (devilishly handsome, which doesn’t hurt a bit under these circumstances) endodontist, I managed to patch the holes in my memory around {dramatic music} Tooth #3.

Tooth #3 has been a problem child for some time. Twenty years ago, Tooth #3 became my very first root canal. Number 1 of 4 to date.

Tooth #3 had a root canal back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. It was a barbaric procedure and the first time I had ever had anything more than a cleaning done without any nitrous oxide to settle my irrationally-anxious self down. I left vowing I would never, ever and I don’t care HOW MUCH IT HURTS return to that office. Never! NEVER I TELL YOU!!!

A few years later, Tooth #3 again erupted into ludicrous pain and I immediately and without even a moment’s hesitation went back to the same man who did the original root canal demanding answers. Because to my mind, dammit, I had already done my time and should never, ever have heard from Tooth #3 again.

Ever.

Dead to me. That’s what Tooth #3 should be.

Now, the x-rays at the time were not anything like the instant-digital-clarity thing we had today, but the answer was much the same.

Oh my god, look at that, you have a massive abscess at the root of that tooth – and spreading!

So back in the day, they did dental surgery (which is a lot like, you know, surgery-surgery, except that you don’t have to be put under for it) (but they did give me Valium) (which didn’t work), cleaned it out, capped the ‘problem root’ with that silver ‘white triangle’ plug, sewed me up and sent me on my way. Clutching the installment payment plan paperwork.

At this point, you would think that Tooth #3 would indeed be done. That I would never again have to hear from Tooth #3.

Yeah. You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But no. Here is the general idea, in pictures, of what is going on in there. First, what it should have looked like this nice, neat example of modern dentistry:



And then, there’s what I’ve actually got:



Apparently, Tooth #3 is that teenager who insists on inviting all the wrong people to party when mom’s out of the house. Because once again, bacteria have moved in around the base of that root and are throwing one heckuva party in there. They’ve eaten a bit of bone this time – apparently, the high doses of Tylenol I take for the arthritis did a dandy job keeping me unaware of a raging jaw infection.

Lovely, huh? Didn’t do much to help my sore joints, but by golly it did wonders for allowing a bacterial mess to get to the size of a Chapstick inside my jaw. Which has only just recently actually begun annoying me – when the discomfort has spread from my jaw up to the bottom of my eye socket. And it still doesn’t really hurt, it just feels…weird. Kind of like…hmm. Like there’s a string looped around from my jaw to my eye socket, and then somebody pulled the string so that everything is being drawn together like a purse? Kind of “puckery”?

I’m told if I stopped taking all my Tylenol / Motrin / Vicodin-at-night, it would really, really hurt. A lot.

This just in: Tama is not a particularly curious sort of human. You know, the type who will respond to someone saying, “Hey, if you touch that stove? It’ll burn you! Which will hurt!” by saying, “Really?!” and thrusting her bare hand onto the stovetop.

Nope. Not even a bit curious about how much exactly this would hurt in the absence of large doses of acetaminophen. I will cheerfully go to my grave without that knowledge, and not miss it even a little bit.

Now, I told you all that so I could tell you this: I think I am going to loathe and despise aging. Not only am I just old enough to have medical professionals say things like, “Well, as we age…” to me, but apparently I am now old enough that ‘modern’ dentists look in my mouth and say, “OK, now, when did they do this? Uh-huh, I see, fifteen years ago makes sense because, see, that was how they did it back when dentists were trained by pterodactyls. These days, we don’t do things like that. It can actually lead to exactly what you’re experiencing right now.”

Dentists in the 21st Century use cement, not silver. Pshaw, silver! Whatever were those pterodactyls thinking?! We scoff at your silver!

Cement, that’s the modern-man’s ticket to tooth-root health.

However, it is only setting me back $1,200 to have this done, and he assures me I won’t need to have my crown replaced or even refinished because he won’t be touching the crown at all!

Only slicing open the gums and putzing around with the root of the tooth.

But the precious, lifeless porcelain will not be harmed in any way.

Hip.
Hip.
Hooray.

{Visualize an expression which says, “While I appreciate that this is saving me money and that I should be much happier about it, at this precise moment I am just not feelin’ the love.}

And by the way? Last night? This was me:



…not pretty, but at least my wallet stopped aching for a little while…

Why ain’t this working?!

I am telling myself how lucky I am. Because you know – people have died of dental abscesses. So I am just downright fortunate that I live in a country where advanced dental treatments are available.

And that dentists are used to people not having dental insurance. And accept Mastercard, Visa, Amex – you name it. And hey! Lucky me! I have an Amex.

Yay.

And also, how wonderfully blissfully lucky-luck-luck girl am I, that the endodontist was able to see me not next week as planned, but today! Today! Yes! In, like, half an hour, the nice, highly trained professional man will be available to take my *cough-gasp-choke* $1,200 and drill holes in my head to release the infection and reseal the roots of my tooth.

That’s right (I say to myself, firmly), I am one lucky person.

…but…

…for some bizarre reason…

I’m not feeling particularly lucky.

Actually? I'm feeling a little sickish. And abused. And really...downright un-lucky.

**sigh**

Hokay. Gotta go brush my teeth and take some Tylenol...and try harder to feel lucky.

Dork Factor: 10

Nobody who isn’t going to be quizzed on these things watches the UC Channel. It’s so boring it defies explanation. Basically, the things on this channel are…classrooms. Pretty much, that’s about it. The blackboard, the students fidgeting in their seats, and a lecturer, droning on and on about quantum physics or independent markets or the Revolution or whatever.

So, you know, yawn. And also, {Click!} NEXT CHANNEL PLEASE!!

But today, Oh My People, I proved yet again! (as if further proof were necessary), that I am a Most Profound Dork.

Richard Davis, President and CEO of US Bancorp was giving a talk at UC Davis, “Making Sense of Banking in the 21st Century”, and…

Whoa.

I think the thud of all those heads hitting the keyboards out there in cyberspace actually registered on the Richter scale. And the snoring! Whew. Like the chainsaws of a thousand loggers….

Anyway, I not only watched it, I enjoyed it.

Also, when she said ‘Richard Davis’ I thought…why do I know that name?…and then she said, “President and CEO of US Bancorp” and I said oh yeah, he replaced whazzizname last year, the guy who is still on the board, you know, yeah. Him.

Lord. There is no hope for me, you know that? I have technically been ‘retired’ from banking for {counts on fingers} {on account of because I am mathematically advanced} six years. And yet I can’t help it: I still follow banks and banking and trends.

And occasionally, I even remember (sort of) the names of bank presidents.

He was, by the way, terrific. He was funny, he was interesting, and suddenly it was an hour later.

Geez. Why couldn’t the lectures I had to sit through have been that interesting?!

See, now, THIS is why I hate going to the dentist

OK, you probably don’t remember this, but back in February I broke a crown.

I just went to the dentist this morning.

Yes, I am aware of the number of calendar days between then and now.

No, you don’t need to do that math for me.

Thanks.

I’ve got the general idea.

ANYWAY.

I finally got in for my appointment. So they took their x-rays and did their exam and proclaimed the following: The broken crown is indeed broken; but possibly does not actually need to be replaced. He’s “pretty sure”, but still making that “not quite completely sure” face.

Fortunately (which is really the wrong word here), he discovered in the course of my exam that another tooth, a tooth which had a root canal some years ago, has developed a nasty abscess around one of the roots – it’s kind of hard to miss, when you look at the x-ray. Even I, with my thundering lack of radiological knowledge, looked at the x-ray and said, “Oh my, that looks like an abscess!” (Well, actually, what I said was, “Hey, did you have your thumb over the lens or something? What’s that big black spot there, next to that white thingee?”) (“Um, OK, the ‘white thingee’ is a root, and that big black spot is the infection.” “…oh…{sob, sob}”).

So, I need to see a specialist anyway! Which means he can get a ‘free’ second opinion on the broken crown and whether or not it needs to be replaced!

Uh, yay?

Oddly, that area had been bugging me, but not that much and I just figured it was ‘transference’ pain. You know, it’s actually this other tooth that hurts, but it feels like this one instead? Well, you’ll just have to take my word for it. See, I’ve had four root canals, so I’ve become an expert on that whole thing where you walk in pointing at tooth #29 saying, “It is definitely this one.” And then they take this little ice stick and push on #29 and you don’t feel anything. #30, you don’t feel anything. #31, and BAM! Rocket ship in space. YOWSAH! OK, yeah, heh heh, OK. So, uh, I think we’ve found the busted one…let’s, uh, let’s not do that again. Ever.

Also (and I knew this, I’ve been ‘on watch’ for this particular jewel of dental problems for about five years now) (I just hoped my brand new dentist wouldn’t notice and I’d be able to say, “Ha! I knew that both of my previous dentists were lying!”), I have early stage periodontitis.

Also-also, this is the second dentist to trot out the, “Well, as we age…” explanation as to why, in spite of twice daily (with occasional bursts to three times) brushing and daily flossing PLUS ALSO I use mouthwash, I have sore, bleeding ‘pocketed’ gums. “As we age,” the nice man said.

He has no idea how close he came to living a Monty Python skit.

“I’m thirty-nine.”
“What?”
“I’m thirty-nine, I’m not old.” (Followed a little later by cries of, “Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”)

And I don’t buy it anyway. Because really. I remember the movies from my elementary school days. The toothbrush and floss, partners against decay, capes flowing bravely in the wind. Dun-duh-DAH! It’s Wonder Brush and Flossman, Decay Prevention Patrol!

I expect my toothbrush to Save The Day, people. AND ALSO I FLOSS. Which I believe is supposed to all by itself prevent everything from cavities to nose cancer. And that should include periodontitis, which is a very difficult word to spell. Just so you know.

They gave me two choices: Continue ignoring it in the hopes that continuing to do what already hasn’t worked to reverse it will somehow work this time until it becomes so bad that I need to have ‘pocket depth reduction treatment’ (yeah, it’s as bad as it sounds) done to my whole mouth, or, I can opt for what they call “intensive, targeted cleaning to the two badly affected areas, plus a thorough ‘old school’ cleaning to the rest of the mouth”.

I do not see a ‘win’ in either of those, really. But, since they solemnly swear they can crank up the nitrous oxide for me BEFORE they hit me with the Novocain, I (with a great many hems and haws) agreed to let them scrape the living daylights out of those couple teeth and also clean the rest of them to within an inch of their enameled lives.

Gee, doesn't that just sound like fun-fun-fun? Doesn't it just make you jump up and down in your chair yelling, "Oh, pick me next! Pick me! Pick ME!"?

And then they wonder why it is that I ‘forget’ to call them for an appointment.

Gee. Yeah. I wonder why that would be...

Also, I need more Blogger Award Categories

I got an email from a friend saying, “Hey, did you know you got nominated for the ‘Hottest Mommy Blogger’ award at Blogger’s Choice Awards?”

No. Way!

So I went and looked and guess what? WAY!



And then I noticed I have zero votes.

That’s right. “Hotness Vote = 0”.

That made me laugh really, really hard. Because seriously – I am sort of the anti-hot mommy…I’m more of the…coated in Kraft mac-n-chez sauce, boogers on the shoulder, sticky-kitchen-floor and oh-yeah-I-meant-to-wash-my-hair-this-week kind of mommy…

And then of course, with that visual in my mind, I went shopping at my friend’s Mary Kay website, even though I don’t even remember to wear what I already got most of the time.

Which made me remember that, yes, once again, I had forgotten to put on any makeup today.

Or, uh, wash my face. Which I kinda promised I would do at the very least. **sigh** {trudge, trudge, trudge she goes, up the stairs…}

While dutifully exfoliating my zit-garden face, I looked at myself in the mirror (doh!), and said, “Oh my. That’s right, I meant to go to the storage shed and retrieve my Jacob’s roving because I wanted to see how much I’ve forgotten about spinning.”

Now, why the realization that I am anti-hot led me to Mary Kay is obvious.

The connection between regarding my visage in a mirror and the roving is a little more obscure. I think it will become clear, however, when I mention that said roving is a lovely, variegated black and gray color.

I love gray and/or white hair. I love it. I find it arresting and beautiful, and always have.

Except mine. Mine is neither arresting nor beautiful. It’s just sort of…sad looking. My hair declines to go gray in good fashion. Oh no. It wants to go gray in random patches, and the gray doesn’t look like gray, or silver, or white.

It is the gray of a piece of cardboard left in the sun for way, way too long.

Ugh.

Hence, I have a great relationship with my very good friend, Ms. Clairol. She’s my bud, people. Oh, we’ve had a few hard times…like the time I thought I’d see what I’d look like with black hair. (Answer: Goth, only without the ‘cool’ factor) (Lord, I looked like I crawled out of a very bad vampire movie, I’m serious.)

And then there was That One Time when I changed my mind in the middle of a color and tried to strip it out and it didn’t go very well at all, and then I walked around looking like a calico cat for a few days before having it professionally redone.

And this post, this post right here, is why I need more categories over at the Blogger’s Choice Awards. See, if they had a ‘Most Chaotic’ or ‘Most Digressive’ or ‘Good Lord It Defies Description Somebody Get This Woman Professional Help’ category?

I would smoke it.

Oh, hey, that reminds me…did I leave the oven on…?

Infidelity in the Den

OK, so, I will give me this one. Because, you know, I only had about seven month’s warning and emergencies do happen. So, currently on (almost off, actually – I’m on the last button band, yay) the needles, one baby sweater:



I am finishing this with literally inches of white yarn to spare. Well, I mean, duh. Even if I had fifty yards, there’d still be inches involved. But what I mean is, I will probably end up with less than a foot of ‘extra’. Which is cutting it rather fine, y’all. But I have measured carefully (several times) and think I’m going to make it.

Either that, or there will be a wild-eyed, drunken rant on this blog rather shortly. And the non-word @*^&@ may be thrown about with abandon.

But wait, what’s this? What is this object I have found (or, to be more precise, been handed by my husband, who was suffering from a rare moment of tidying up the front room)?



Why, could it be Cromarty from Alice Starmore’s Celtic Collection, in Ye Olde Plaine Woolle Which Hath Not a Name Upon it? (This yarn really is ‘generic’ – no name, not even printed on the mill cones) (Kind of scratchy-awful to work with pre-washing, but one quick dip in the tub with a little Woolite and the garment becomes soft and lovely and oh-so-warm.)

Why yes. Yes it could. And is. Hmm. Now that it is before me, I remember that I was doing this. And I said something like “…well, let me just whump out a baby sweater and a romper and then I’ll get right back to it.”

This was back in February, if memory serves. And memory serving is obviously not something I can rely upon. Since then I have cast on and completed several baby sweaters, the romper, a batch of infant hats, a pair of fingerless gloves, two adult hats, a pair of socks and, oh yeah. The only item I’m actually claiming to be working on right now?



Celtic Lattice, which has been languishing at the bottom of the knitting basket for a few weeks now.

Even the lonely traveling sock has gotten more time in the sun…



…and people, it has been on the needles since mid-March. And remains a sock. No ‘s’ on the end, there. Not an end-s in sight.

Now, what makes this particularly pathetic is this. I was just saying quietly to myself, “Hmm, it’s almost May Day. I’d like to start something fresh and new on Bealtaine this year.”

I was pondering maybe doing a Bohus (only in rather muted colors, thus setting me up for endless arguments with myself about whether or not I ought to rush out and buy some brighter colors to mix things up a bit because after all, a Knitter does not live by earth tones alone), or plucking up my laceweight courage and attempting something flimsy and wafty, or knuckling down and casting on the sweater for the DH (He of the Never-Ending Arms), or then again I have this beautiful pile of Elsbeth Lavold’s Silky Wool (deviously acquired for about 40% off retail, bwa ha ha ha ha) and have been contemplating something silky-woolish.

All the while, I have four perfectly good projects languishing in the basket.

Huh? What? What projects? Where? {blank expression} I see no forgotten projects here…

**sigh**

See, infidelity is one thing. But at least one could have a little bit of conscientiousness around it, don’t you think? At least be aware that one is flirting with multiple partners? But noooooooooo.

All I do is occasionally mutter, “Now, where on earth do you suppose all my #6 circulars have gotten to…?” without it ever once dawning on me that, given the absence of about 3,000 pairs of #6 circular needles, well.

There’s probably Something Going On in the darker corners of the craft closet, you know?

I’m what you call a professional klutz

So. Don’t try this at home. It takes a pro to do something like this.

I made myself an afternoon mocha – it’s in a smaller cup, made with decaf and so forth, blah blah blah. The smaller cup has a 3” diameter. So, yeah. It’s a pretty small little area.

I wandered into the office and set down the mug. Logged on to check my email. Reached for a foil-wrapped chocolate egg with the carelessness of a mother who doesn’t have any children currently watching over her shoulder as she raids the Easter candy.

I can’t tell you how I did it. This would be a trade secret, and I have sworn an oath to protect the Secrets of the Klutz Klub.

But somehow, using my finely-honed klutz skills, I flicked the egg instead of picking it up. Almost like I was playing Tiddlywinks with it.

It flew up in the air, hung there for a second (just long enough for me to register that my afternoon treat was airborne and about to escape), then plummeted down toward the desk.

And landed in my mocha.

::Ploink!::

Nothin’ but net, people. It was so perfect an entry that there was scarcely a ripple on the surface of the coffee as the foiled chocolate plunged into its depths.

Only a truly skilled klutz could have managed this.

The poor little chocolate drowned in there, because I was so busy laughing I didn’t rescue it in time. Alas, poor chocolate, I wish I could have known it better…

He is mine and I am his and we are each others, amen

There is an essay in Brain, Child from Summer 2006 (available online as of today) called Mommy Comes Back.

I think most mothers who have dropped children off at daycare have gone through similar routines. The crying, the ‘but mommy, I want to stay with you’, the unexpected eruptions from children you thought were over it.

One of the things that bothered me, every single day, was that Captain Adventure never got over it. From the first day to the last, he has resisted being left at daycare with every fiber of his being.

I was positively arrested by this part of the article: Unconvinced, he clamps his body around mine, ignoring Gracie's offer of Kipper's Sticky Paws. More children arrive. More mothers depart. Harry and I remain, frozen in our embrace.

This is exactly what I’ve been going through with Captain Adventure, with the intensity steadily increasing. What used to be ‘mere’ fussing has turned into outright clinging, to the point where I have to enlist a teacher to help peel him off me, every single morning.

And this after ten, fifteen, twenty minutes of just crouching on the floor trying to allow him to acclimate, get interested in toys or friends, start following the lead of the pack of toddlers in the room.

Nothing. Doing.

Captain Adventure is not a follower – and he does not want his momma to leave.

Ever.

Every day is just the same. We arrive at daycare, babbling and singing. He cheerfully pushes the buttons on the keypad at the door as we go in.

We drop Boo Bug off in her room. She goes cheerfully, with barely even a backward glance. She has an extensive social life that needs tending, friends to gather with, clothing to check out, art to do…a very busy day ahead.

And then it starts.

His arm goes around my neck and holds tightly as we walk to his classroom. I try to set him down. He clings more tightly to me, desperately. If he can manage it, he puts his legs around me as well – literally clinging with every limb he has.

Other parents come, and go. We remain, crouching tensely together. I try to get him interested in toys, or snack, or art.

He smiles at me. It isn’t a happy smile. It’s a frantic one. It’s begging for reassurance. You aren’t leaving me, right?

All of my children had phases of separation anxiety. Shoot, Boo Bug started putting on a bit of a show a couple weeks ago, bursting into tears at the door and acting quite bereft as I walked away. It lasted a couple days, and then she was bored with that act and moved on.

Only Captain Adventure has taken it to this degree – for twelve long months, he has resisted being dropped off. He holds onto me for all he’s worth. As soon as I get one hand off me, the other claps back on. He wraps his fists in my hair, clamps his legs around mine. He seldom cries anymore. Instead, he smiles, stares up at me with wide, intense eyes, silent and frantic, and holds me for all he’s worth.

He drops to the floor as I leave, taking with me the knowledge of his unhappiness and despair. I tell him, I’ll be back, honey.

I say, Mommy always comes back.

It’s OK, baby. I say, as a teacher helps wrench his hands off me, helps me untangle his legs from around me. You play with your friends while I work, and I’ll be back soon.

He looks at me with those big, miserable eyes, and I honestly don’t know if he understands. Sometimes I’m sure he does; sometimes I’m sure he doesn’t. And I curse his speech delay, and my inability to communicate with him with words. I’ve taken for granted the ability to reason with even my very young children. Words provide great power when it comes to comforting our young; his speech delay robs us of that, leaves me with nothing but notoriously faulty intuition to tell me whether or not he’s really suffering or merely peeved.

He will sometimes go all day without uttering a single sound, I’ve been told. Or cry for hours. Or simply go off by himself and play quietly, ignoring the other children, just waiting.

Waiting for mommy to come back.

And then, when I arrive to pick him up, he runs to me giggling and shrieking, tries to climb up me like a jungle gym. He throws himself into my arms, turns and waves. “BYE BYE!” he’ll shout, beaming delightedly at the same teachers he has not even made direct eye contact with all day. “BYE BYE!!”

Then he buries his face in my neck, strokes my hair, pats my back, yells, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” in my ear.

He came to me today with a book. He took the knitting from my hands and set it carefully into the basket, muttering, “’Er i-go” (there you go). He climbed onto my lap and pressed his face against my neck for a moment, then turned around, pushed the book into my hands and waited for the story. He looked up at me with such happy eyes…I am yours and you are mine…hold me, read to me, love me, tell me how special I am!

I held him and thought, I don’t have to drop you off anywhere like that again for a long time.

And it made me so happy I could have cried.

It has been hard for both of us, all this long year. We’ve both suffered separation anxiety.

I won’t mind not doing it to either of us for a long time to come.

I won't mind even a little, tiny bit.

Sometimes I just gotta shut the @*^&@ up

I woke up this morning with a lengthy-long list of complaints.

My head hurt. My stomach hurt. I was hungry, and also queasy. My scalp is itching. My right big toe is aching. Along with every single joint on my left side. And my right elbow. And both of my wrists. Knitting? Not right now. Not with these ugly things embracing my wrists:



OK. New, they are not ugly. But mine are several months old and starting to look a little…ragged.

And I’ve been working on the New Den Order, which includes turning the screws on the household budget while simultaneously (and somewhat incongruously) shopping around for piano teachers, ballet studios and also mommy-n-me groups I can attend with Captain Adventure to ensure that he loses nothing and gains a lot by being home with me and while I’m on the subject, why me?! What would be wrong with daddy doing daddy-n-me, why is the burden of catching the boy’s verbal and social skills up with the bottom-rung-of-average on me?! I mean, it isn’t that I mind, or don’t want to…it’s just that I’m taking exception to pretty much everything today and that includes the whole ‘mommy takes the lead on all things social, medical and financial around here’ thing.

Wah wah wah gripe gripe gripe.

And you know what is really pissing me off?

The knowledge that none of it is anybody’s fault but mine.

Stupid maturity. I hates it, I haaaaaaaates it.

I hate knowing that I, and I alone, am in charge of my attitude. That nobody except me has responsibility for my happiness. That it is my job to do what I need to do to feel good.

And also that diving face-first into the Easter candy is not going to get that particular job done.

I mean, @^*^@&@*^&@!!!!

What kind of messed up thing is that?!

It’s like…knowing that while I could go to the mall for some retail therapy, it wouldn’t really make me feel any better. It might feel kind of good at that precise moment, but then I’d get the bill and say, “What were you thinking?!” and then I’d feel worse than I do right now.

Or knowing that if I don’t get off my lazy, ever-expanding behind and clean the bathrooms, I am going to be aware of their less than pristine state until such time as I do get off my duff and clean them.

The fact that I keep reminding myself that it will take less than fifteen minutes to whip through all three bathrooms in this Den just…really doesn’t make me feel any better.

Sometimes, I think I have an actual split personality. There’s this fifteen year old inside me who whines and kicks grass tufts and grouses about everything. And then there’s some old granny in there who says, “Now honey, we both know that…” and states the @*^&@ing obvious and my inner teenager gets so pissed off that she raids the liquor cabinet HA HA, that’ll show YOU, Granny!

But then Granny puts the bottle back before I can even get the cap off because, after all dearie, we both know that if you have even one little drinkie-poo this early in the day, you’ll be stretched out snoring on the couch by lunchtime, and you’ll wake up with a stiff neck and be ever-so-upset because you didn’t get anything done today and also missed Mad Money again…

ARGH! The witch! She’s always right!!!!!

“Here, sweetheart, have a nice cup of chai. There, isn’t that lovely? Nice and strong, just the way you like it…that’ll perk you right up, dear one…”

{grouse, grumble, sip}

I don’t have everything. But I’ve got enough. Anything above that is just a bonus. And while I’m finding it difficult to deal with my stupid arthritis this week, it’s not that bad. It could be cancer, it could be rheumatoid arthritis, it could be any number of things. But it’s not. It’s just aching joints, probably pissed off because of the sudden change from ‘almost hot’ to ‘downright chilly’ this week.

We’ve got money in the bank and meat in the freezer, know what I mean?

It’s all good. Even on pissy days, I’ve got it good.

And check it out. How can you stay pissy, when you’ve got pink roses…



…and purple ones…



…and your lemon tree is making promises like these?



If even one out of ten of the blossoms on this tree become lemons, I've got about...eight lemon pies coming.

Yeah.

OK.

It’s time to shut the @*^&@ up about all my misery and woe.

And clean the bathrooms already.

With lemon-scented Mr. Clean.

Eeeeeeeee! It’s my first award, too!!

sleepycat tagged me with a Thinking Blogger Award!



And I’d like to thank all the little people who got me here. If it weren’t for their incessant banging on the bathroom door while I’m trying to read my magazines, wiping their boogers on my ‘dry clean only’ attire and, while staring down their noses at the healthy meals lovingly placed before them, demanding mac-n-chez on a regular basis, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Which is the madhouse. Where I have received an award. Yay!

I’ve been surfing around looking at the other blogs already sporting this little button and wow. What great company to be in! I love being with smart people. It’s like…you know how you can be ‘cool by association’? Hey! Maybe I can be ‘smart by association’.

And then I started going through my blog list looking for my five favorites ‘thinking’ blogs.

Several hours passed. During which I snickered, snorted, nodded wisely, went “awwwwww” and gave out a few virtual hugs and pats on backs.

And then I said, “Wait. What was I doing again?”

And started over.

You can see where this is going, right? It’s like trying to pack away your photo albums. Just going to put this album in the box…hey…is this the one with the pictures of us in Ireland? {Several hours pass, during which absolutely nothing goes into any box anywhere}

So, here are a mere five of my zillions of favorite blogs when I’m in the mood to be given a good think. I have pared this down from literally about two dozen. And I’m still second (third, fourth) guessing myself. And also? I really need to update my links. And now? I digress. Without further blather, I tag:

Three Beautiful Things. Every day, Clare posts three things that have given her pleasure. I love getting my daily dose of happy – and the reminder to stop and wonder at the wee little beautiful things around us every single day.

21st Century Mom. This lady does triathlons. She’s a feminist. She’s raised three gorgeous children who not only still talk to her, but think she’s cool. She gives me a much-needed kick in the behind when I’m feeling just ever-too-delicate to get out there and get the business done. Whenever I’m thinking, “Eh, but it’s all the way upstairs and my kneeeeeeee is just killing meeeeeeeeee…”, I can just think about her getting out there and conquering man-eating hills and then I figure I can probably manage thirteen crummy steps.

The Wonderful World of Nothing Worthwhile, which often during the romp brings up things to really think about. I’m pretty sure the author would neither confirm nor deny rumors that he is attempting to actually make us think with his stories and musings, but reading his posts often send me down introspective pathways. Or Red Lobster. Either way.

Dogs Steal Yarn, a freelance-writer mom, her precious Thumper and all things ranging from vegan eating to living in New York. Or not living in New York anymore. Either way.

And finally, a fairly new daily read for me, Second Effort. “Laboring in the obscurity he so richly deserves, your crusty correspondent offers his views on just about everything. Nothing herein should be taken too seriously: If you look closely, you can see the twinkle in the Old Curmudgeon's eye. Or is that a cataract?”

Hokay. Off y’all go. And I’m going to go check out blogrolling, because really now. I need technology to help me, here…my links are way out of date.

And yet, we stay together

My husband and I have rather different ideas of what passes for well-spent time parked in front of the television. Especially on a work night.

See, if I had control of the remote tonight, we would be watching something like…Ace of Cakes, or that thing about the meteors, or possibly Dateline NBC.

Instead, I’m in here, and he’s out there watching Final Destination 3.

There are two things about this that drove me out of the room.

One is that it is a work night. To me, the idea of starting a movie which won’t be finished until 11:30 at night…when you will be rudely awakened by the alarm clock at 5:00 the next morning…is…well, how to put this kindly?

Um. Well. It’s…maybe a touch…

Moronic, OK? I think it is downright moronic. See, I want to be in bed within the next forty minutes. If I were watching television tonight, I would have quite intentionally picked something that would be over before then.

Not something that ended an hour and a half after I wanted to be asleep.

The other thing is, I’m a well-documented wuss when it comes to scary movies. I can’t stand gratuitous violence. I don’t like to be surprised that way. Well. In fact, I don’t really like to be surprised, period. Not in the ‘and now we all jump out and yell {SURPRISE, BOO, HAPPY LEIF ERIKSON DAY}’ kind of way.

I mean, Life is full of surprises. I’ve come to accept that. I know that whatever I think is going to happen is subject to being changed on me at the last second by forces outside of my control. I’m OK with that. I’m even OK with sudden drastic changes. Although I reserve the right to rant endlessly about them, I’m actually fairly good at keeping my overall footing as things change.

So, surprises are OK.

I just don’t want living ones jumping out of dark corners at me.

So a movie which is all about gratuitous violence jumping out of dark corners and tearing people apart or whatever-all else is going on in there (by the every-five-seconds bursts of wild screaming, banging and other noise, I’m guessing there’s quite a bit of it in this movie) (memo to me: buy darling husband a set of wireless headsets), is really not for me.

Not even a little bit.

Which brings me to my Question of the Day: How is it that a man who loves and adores movies of all sorts not only managed to marry a woman like me, and why we are still together?

Seriously. People have divorced for less, people.

He’s one of those people who will rush to a theater the same day a movie he wants to see opens. He doesn’t care if he is part of a capacity crowd. It doesn’t bother him if some kid is kicking the back of his chair for two and a half hours, or that some idiot child is blathering into her cell phone the entire time about who is dating whom when and OH MY GAWD I KNOW I SAW THAT TOO!

I will wait until the last possible day and then? I might just wait for the DVD. I don’t like going to the theater. I dislike being crowded in there with all those other people. Listening to them talk or shift or cough or giggle or whatever, all the way through the movie. I don’t like the stale smelling theater or the sucrose-substance coating on the floor that makes walking a cardiovascular workout rivaling any treadmill.

And also, I am ever-so-NOT above the ultimate sacrilege: I will walk away from a movie. Right in front of God and everybody, I will turn my back on the film and walk away if I don’t like it.

And sometimes even if I do like it. If I need to rotate the laundry, I’ll just go do it. And no, you don’t need to pause the movie for me. Really. Please. Don’t.

I will get up in the middle of a scene because I’ve decided I need to go to bed.

Yet here we are. Married ten years now, and still no signs of impending divorce.

Although we do have that big remodeling project coming soon, and I’m already having to become quite stern about things like taking sledgehammers to cabinetry before the architect has even come to take his final measurements, let alone given us, you know, blueprints of any sort…

Not really, but…

…sometimes, I half-wish that computers would just…know what I meant.

Let’s say I have a password which is ‘StockGoddess’. And I type in…StickGoddess, or StockFoddess, or StockGoddes.

C’mon. It’s close enough.

You know what I meant, you big old sack of moldy weeds, and giving me the ‘excuse me, but that password isn’t correct ha ha ha’ routine is really peckin’ annoying.

Hokay. Glad we had this little chat.

And no, I don’t really wish computers would be anything less than the utterly literal monsters they are. The last thing I really need in my life is my computer deciding that when I said I wanted to trade 250 shares of XYZ.com, what I meant was trade 520 shares of ZXY.net.

{shudder}

OK, I’m so bored…

…that I’ll tell you about the rattlesnake. Obligatory Safety Message: Don’t ever go hiking alone. It is not the brightest thing we humans can do on this planet, being as how there are so many ways for us to get killed off out there in the big, bad wilderness.

So, I had gone hiking (alone) (idiot) and was about three miles from my car on the return trip when I decided to sit down and enjoy the view for a few minutes. So down I sat on the side of the road, which I checked very carefully for red ants. Because I was very concerned about red ants, because when you sit on them?

It sucks.

But there weren’t any, so I cheerfully sat down and began sucking on my canteen, enjoying the sweeping view of the valley to my left. Being the twitchy type, I soon decided it was time to get back up on my feet and head out. Fortunately, I had set my walking stick down on my right side – otherwise, I might have just jumped to my feet and earned myself swift retribution, instead of first glancing over for my stick and beholding the glorious sight of the snake. Which was a little over a hands-width away from my right foot and still moving forward.

Right. Toward. Me.

All kidding aside and in spite of the instant and paralyzing terror…beautiful animal. Beautiful. Glistening, elegantly scaled and capped with a stunning rattle. If it hadn’t been for that whole ‘painful bite and possible death’ thing, I would have been delighted to make its acquaintance.

My first thought was, “Whoa! That thing must be, like, eight feet long.”

My second thought was, “Don’t be stupid. They don’t get that long.” (The common species found up on Mt. Diablo [which is where I was] is called the Northern Pacific Rattlesnake, which generally doesn’t get much over five feet long – this bad boy was big, both around and in length, but he weren’t no eight feet. It was nearly as long as my walking stick, which was precisely five feet tall.)

And my third was a kind of mini-storm of realizations. Large snake, triangular-head-rattle-tail-forked-tongue-pit-face-oh-crap-yeah-that’s-a-rattler, close to my body, far from my car, molting season (theory supported by the fact that the animal had slithered right up on me like that without realizing I was a person - molting often impairs their vision and also? Makes them pissy, nervous and prone to striking at anything that moves. Great. Just swell.), DAMN that’s a big snake, not a lot of people out today if I need help and also? ACK.

Now, when I saw the snake I jumped and yelped. At this point, it became aware that I was not a nice, warm rock to sun itself on but rather a living Something.

We both instantly froze.

I pretended to be a rock. It imitated a stick. And thus we remained.

Mexican standoff.

I knew that snake wanted a way out as badly as I did. I knew that, in general, rattlers aren’t the aggressive monsters they’re made out to be by Hollywood. Some are, sure. But in largest part, they don’t want anything to do with people. They’d rather hide or run than fight you. They tend to bite people because they are either startled into it (when, say, a foot suddenly descends from Heaven onto their peacefully sunning backs or a hand is suddenly thrust into their den), or because they feel attacked or cornered.

But they don’t, as one particularly awful movie I endured proposed, chase people through their homes, desperate to attack and inject their venom, bwa-hahahahaha.

I also knew, though, that we were in a bit of a bind here. It was a trust issue, you see. I mean. I knew that the snake (probably) didn’t want to bite me – but I couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t just do it the minute I moved. And the snake had absolutely no way of knowing I wasn’t one of those wild-eyed snake-hacking types.

We took a long, long moment to size each other up. Felt like an hour, but was probably no more than a minute, possibly two. Neither one of us wanted to move. Hello Rock, meet Stick…Stick, Rock. Oh, how do you do…I’d offer to shake but obviously, being as how I’m a Stick and definitely not a Snake and all…

Eventually, it became apparent that one of us had to do something. Ever so gently, I turned my foot so that I was showing the snake the sole of my boot. I was hoping that if it did feel the need to strike me, it would hit the sole of the boot and not, uh, me.

When I moved, it’s tail whisked gently back and forth, giving a single rattle of warning. {shh-k!}

And then we both froze again, getting used to the new situation. It didn’t raise its head from the ground, coil, or make any other movement indicating it was considering striking; and I didn’t start wildly swinging my stick around screaming like a chimp on speed.

So far, so good.

After another long moment, I began drawing myself gently away. The snake just watched, only showing signs of anxiety when I got to my feet. The tail twitched. {shh-k! shh-k!} But it didn’t raise its head even a little from the ground. Just lay there…pretending to be a stick…watching and waiting…

I retreated. ‘Retreated’ should be pronounced ‘walked backward away from the snake as quickly as possible without flat-out running’.

And then I stood there and watched with great admiration as it began making with flank speed for the far side of the trail and disappeared into the grass.

That is the closest I have come to a rattlesnake in the wild…that I know of. It is entirely possible that I have walked right over one, or even sat down on top of a den and escaped getting a bite on my butt by the narrowest of margins.

It was beautiful and graceful and terrifying and utterly enchanting. I can see why those nut cases who do the animal shows insist on getting right up close to things. “Oh look, it’s a black mamba, one of the most venomous and aggressive snakes in the world! Let’s try to pet it!!” There really is something about being that close to these wild creatures – and being able to come out of the experience in one piece through the grace of the Almighty (and with due thanks to the park rangers who handed out all those pamphlets about ‘what to do if you encounter a {$Wild_Animal}’ I dutifully collected and read while using the…uh, I mean, in my spare time) which makes you feel alive in a way you just don’t get from surviving yet another trip to the supermarket.

But m’self personally…that’s the closest I ever want to come. And I didn’t want to get that close.

Even if it did give me one of the best cocktail-party stories ever. ;-)

BWA!

Cause see, that thing with the toilet paper? So totally something I would do to make my children laugh...

You Are 70% Weird

You're so weird, you think you're *totally* normal. Right? But you wig out even the biggest of circus freaks!

How Weird Are You?

Ooooooh, THERE’S a surprise

Brace yourselves. The results of this quiz were positively shocking…

You Are Great With Money

You know the value of a dollar - and you save and spend wisely. By living below your means, you've set yourself up for a rich future. And while it may hurt to sacrifice now, you'll probably have plenty of money later on. You're on your way to riches - just keep it up.

Are You Good With Money?

Ditto with this one…heh… ‘it is somewhat likely that you are a chaotic mess’, no really? What could have clued Sherlock in on that one, I wonder quietly to myself…

You Are 20% Abnormal

You are at low risk for being a psychopath. It is unlikely that you have no soul. You are at medium risk for having a borderline personality. It is somewhat likely that you are a chaotic mess. You are at low risk for having a narcissistic personality. It is unlikely that you are in love with your own reflection. You are at low risk for having a social phobia. It is unlikely that you feel most comfortable in your mom's basement. You are at low risk for obsessive compulsive disorder. It is unlikely that you are addicted to hand sanitizer.

How Abnormal Are You?

And also, I am boring, er!, a realist…

You Are a Realist

You don't see the glass as half empty or half full. You see what's exactly in the glass. You never try to make a bad situation seem better than it is... But you also never sabotage any good things you have going on. You are brutally honest in your assessments of situations - and this always seems to help you cope.

Are You An Optimist or Pessimist?

Uh. Yes. In point of fact, I am a little bored tonight. Why do you ask?

Beginning of the End

Well, today, I made it official. Hello, how are you today and oh by the way – here’s my letter of resignation.

Up until Friday afternoon, I was still only 95% certain I knew what I was doing in resigning. The stress, the ‘eh’ cash in pocket at the end of the month, the stress on the children, blah blah blah. But I still had ‘buts’ and ‘wells’ and ‘hmms’ ringing through my brain that made me hesitate to actually say, “Yes. I would like to cash out my vacation and go on my way now, please.”

And then…my boss called. Simple thing, right? My cell phone rang, I looked down and recognized his cell phone number on my caller ID. 3:00-ish on a beautiful Friday afternoon.

Now, for a normal person, this would be no big.

But the way things have gotten for me of late? I got a ‘kicked in the stomach by a mule’ feeling. And my palms went all slick. My heart started doing the cha-cha-cha. My blood pressure probably soared. My head began pounding. I felt vaguely dizzy and disturbingly nauseated.

I felt exactly the way I felt the time I was resting by the side of the trail while hiking, gazing out over the hills in the most peaceful, pastoral manner imaginable, turned my head back to glance the other way and found a forty four foot rattlesnake had slithered to within about half a foot of my right foot. Seriously. He was so close I could see the individual scales on his wee little nose. And people? I wasn’t wearing my glasses.

GAH!!!!!!!! Terror, now with the added bonus of utter paralysis! Can’t move, can’t breathe, must fight or flee, either option wrong, AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

I fumbled with my phone and missed twice before I managed to hit the ‘ignore call’ button.

And then I sat back fighting back overwhelming nausea and thought, “What the @*^&@ was that?!?!”

Because, while I am definitely on the ‘non-confrontational’ side of the equation when it comes to Interpersonal Communications, I do not think of myself as being either shy or particularly timid. Generally speaking, if you begin to piss me off or otherwise agitate me, I will look you right in the eye and…say something subtle and snarky that, without actually picking a fight (see ‘non-confrontational’ comment above), will definitely let you know that I’m not playing this game with you.

And I ain’t scared of nobody. Including the boss. Who nevertheless appears to have acquired the power to turn me into a sniveling coward merely by displaying his caller ID on my cell phone?

Oh no. Oh no he di’nt.

It was at that point that my certainty that leaving this job was the thing to do went from 95% to 99.9% - and after I reassured myself over the weekend that, while corset-tight, the post-paycheck budget was a go, well.

The resignation letter was drafted, read a few (dozen) times (and some sniveling rants removed), and sent. And letters withdrawing the children from their assorted daycares were likewise drafted, read a few times and delivered along with the verbal bitching explanation.

Done, done and done.

I am officially no longer working, and officially no longer getting a paycheck, and my children are officially no longer in daycare as of April 20. (Whether or not they will unofficially not be dropped off any longer before then remains to be seen.)

Buckle up, friends. The ride is about to start getting interesting again…

Strawberry bliss

Holy carp, people, my box just arrived from Planet Organics and there was a pint of strawberries in it and OH MY GAWD…those were (you will note the past tense here – for the record, the box hit my porch less than fifteen minutes ago…) the Best.Strawberries.Ever.

Seriously. I thought I’d try one while I washing them…and then I thought I’d try another one…and then maybe just one more…and then I gave up all pretense and stood over the sink sucking them down like I was ten seconds from Armageddon.

OK, just had to share. Now I really must go and destroy the evidence take out the trash…

We interrupt this vest for the following EMERGENCY sweater

People, I am way behind on the baby knitting. The baby this sweater is going to was born yesterday; fortunately, the baby is significantly smaller than the sweater is going to be so I can pretend I knew that and was ‘thinking ahead’.

Also, the reason this looks like a wadded up ball of weirdness is because these particular #2 circular needles are way too short for this project. Using my keen psychic abilities, I see a visit to my local yarn store for a set of #2 Addi-Turbos, 32” length. Ordinarily I would not do that, I’d make do with these for this one project, but I have two (2) more of these exact sweaters to make and I am not dealing with this ‘too short circular’ thing through the rest of this AND TWO MORE. This is a drag!! I can’t see my work, the stitches are all scrunched up together and I can’t tell if I’m doing the patterns right! And also I keep ‘zip-dropping’ stitches!

What is ‘zip-dropping’, you ask? Ooooooh, my knitting friends, I know you know about this one. This is where you tug swear to GOD with great gentleness at your work, you know, kind of twitching at the stitches either to get a good look at your recent work or to get more stitches in position to knit and then? Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-IP! Approximately 274 stitches shoot off the needle and begin mischievously ripping themselves all the way back down to the cast on edge.

I’ve been doing this a lot since this got over two hundred stitches on this tiny little circular. I have been practicing my patience. And my deep breathing exercise. And my zen. Plus also I may be giving my vocabulary a workout. Quick, I need 273 more words for ‘dammit!’

Anyhoo, you’ll have to take it on faith that this wadded up ball of weirdness is Rutelilje, from Dalegarn Baby Kolleksjon Nr 129 (now out of print, but Personal Threads still has four copies as of this morning).



I’m doing this one in Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino. Sure, ‘cashmerino’ allegedly refers to the fact that it is cashmere and merino. But you want to know why it’s really called ‘cash’merino? Because it is not a cheap yarn. KnitPicks has spoilt me to my very core with their inexpensive ‘Swish’ for baby clothes – but I needed a finer weight for this one and was unable to find anything else so there you are – this one is being done in baby cashmerino, and the other two will be done in the actual Dale of Norway Baby Ull which is likewise not cheap.

But it is very pleasant to work with so I’m (mostly) shutting up about how much it cost. It is 55% merino wool, 33% microfibre (oddly, ‘microfibre’ is tripping my ‘that ain’t spelled right’ flag, even though ‘fibre’ does not) and 12% cashmere, a nice blend which gives warmth, softness, and then you can toss it into the washing machine (lay flat to dry, though, thank you).

Now I told you all that so I could ask you this: what has happened to the nature of time? Specifically, what the heck is up with the way nine months passes?

See, when I was the one making the babies, nine months was this incredibly long period of time that just sort of inched along and I’d been pregnant, like, forever and then finally, nine loooooong months were over and finally I had the new baby and could FINALLY get on with boozing it up my life.

But obviously, something has changed about the way time works. Because now, nine months can go by before I have even had time to recognize the words, “I’m expecting! Baby should be here around the first of April!” as meaning that I should be putting something on the needles for an Impending Arrival.

I have known about this particular baby since…October? And yet I was caught completely by surprise by the announcement last week that the c-section was this week. Whaaaaaaaaat?

See, with the twins, I can cut myself some slack. We had ‘radio silence’ from the first announcement until they were actually here, so, well. Fell right off my radar. But this other baby? Pshaw, people! This is someone I think about regularly. This is someone who features rather large in my husband’s past. This is someone whose voice regularly soars out of my CD player. This is a kitchen-door kind of friend.

So obviously, I cannot possibly have so thoroughly spaced on her pregnancy.

There is patently something going on in the space-time continuum which causes nine months to pass differently for her than it does for me. Her nine months went by in, like, three days over here in the Den.

I’m serious. Call NASA. Or JPL. Or somebody…scientific. This wants exploring. This needs exploring. Because otherwise? The back-order situation in the baby sweater department is going to become downright untenable around here…

Up, up from the forgotten realms...

Look, y’all! It’s my old planner system!!!



Yes. That is a prancing pony sticker on it. One of the girls thought it was a little on the drab side and decorated it for me. Wasn’t that sweet? And yes, I tried to peel it off and no, it wouldn’t come off so yeah.

I called it a ‘feature’ and left it alone. After I had peeled off part of her little top-knot, giving it a kind of ‘distressed or possibly antique’ appearance. Which I am also calling a feature. Hey, people pay big bugs for distressed, antique furniture, right? Ergo…this is a fancy binder, people. Just like your grandma used to have…(ahem) (moving on)

This went AWOL two years ago, surfacing yesterday when I was removing books from a shelf which has gone to storage.

I flipped through my goal sheets and my project notes for the various irons I had in the fire at the time. All planning appears to have ceased rather abruptly on March 10. March 10 is scheduled right down to 6:00; from March 11 on, there is nothing but the highest level notes on the monthly tabs.

This here is my new ‘planner system’ – it was acquired not purchased (“Here, you do that planner-thing, don’t you? Take this, somebody gave it to me and I don’t want it!” “Uh, thanks, OK…”) and while I’m not 100% delighted with it, eh, it works:



So sleek! So professional!

So…under-utilized.

You know, there are some things in life which, though painfully obvious, still manage to blindside me. For example, the fact that if one has four children, there will come a point where a service for 8 is not going to be enough dishes. Even though it seems like a lot of dishes – it isn’t enough. Laundry I was prepared for – the fact that in the course of a normal day with everybody home I might run the dishwasher not once or even twice, but up to three times in a single day? Came out of left field and left me sitting on the ground with a headache.

Before this slick, professional planner case, I used another plain old binder. It had one (1) groovy feature, which was that it could stand up like a presentation easel, only vertically. Ooooh, aaaaaah. But then, the little stand part broke and shortly thereafter the binder itself kind of…well, it fell apart.

Apparently, I am very hard on my planner binders. Well. Not apparently. I am. I treat them with a shocking disregard for their delicate natures. I literally throw them into vehicles, I shove them into backpacks, I use them as plates when eating bagels, and, well, you get the idea.

I’m hard on them.

But also, when I have just a plain old binder, I use the planner. This new case-thing? I haven’t used much. Sure, it has a nifty card holder for my gift cards…



…but I’m not using the planner.

I carry it with me, but I don’t actually then use it. I tried to use it like a purse, but frankly it is awkward to get into and also when you open up a planner at McDonald’s and start scrambling for your cash, people get nervous – they expect you to start selling them things. Because apparently only people who are going to sell you get-rich-quick schemes carry these things into a McDonalds.

It also has six rings, which is one of the more annoying aspects to day planners. I know it is supposed to be a “kit” thing and that there is probably some kind of prestige involved here that I am (as usual) missing because I’m much more about ‘function’ than ‘hey look, it’s a $Expensive_and_Exclusive_Designer bag!’, but it drives me up a tree when I can’t just stick binder paper into my planner.

I use binder paper for 99% of my planning. Cheap, college ruled binder paper, people. I use it for everything from plotting the course of our lives to doodling out what’s for dinner.

Six rings? Annoying.

But I digress.

As I’m attempting to start the process of pulling our lives back together around here, I’m finding it very hard to do the one thing I know I really, really need to do: Use the planner.

With four kids going off in different directions, with all the appointments and lessons and vacation days and ‘oh by the way honey I’m going to be in Seattle for three days next month’ stuff that goes on in the Den, not having everything centralized and accounted for in the planning process is opening up the door and inviting the tornado into the house.

And here I have a fancy-dancy, expensive Official Franklin-Covey planning “system”…and I’m not using it. It just…doesn’t work for me. It makes me feel kind of tired. It looks like work to me, and I keep finding myself distracted by what y’all have to say on your blogs, and interesting facts about sow bugs, and also the weather in New Zealand, which I hear is very, very wet these days…

I need a new binder. (While I know it doesn’t look it in the picture, the old one I just found is actually already beginning to split apart.) Just a plain old binder, an inexpensive three ring binder big enough to accommodate some folders, monthly and daily planning sheets, and a 200-sheet package of college ruled paper. A $2 binder. And two, three Pee-Chee folders maybe.

Which is humorous, considering that the one I have in that picture there runs somewhere around sixty or seventy bucks new. It really is very, very nice. Yessir. Nice. Fancy!

And, uh, I’d really like a plain old 2” plastic binder now, please?

There are so many systems out there. Filing systems, housework systems, parenting systems. All of them promise one-size-fits-all solutions to everything from career management to managing your pantry. And yet, as clearly evidenced by the world around us, we are not a one-size kind of world. And when you try to jam something of one size into a system of another, well, it doesn’t work out too well.

I had a boss who had an Official Planning System™ like this one, and he would actually decide what cell phone he would get based on how it fit in his planner, he was that fond of it. The very sight of it calmed and energized him, made him feel comfortable and in control, he loved the feel of the leather and felt ready to get down to business when he regarded its six rings and slick indexing.

Me, I love the plain old $2 binder. I love the rough-and-tumble of it. I like the organized chaos of it, the way there is a folder with a wild tangle of receipts (organized chaos), a folder with a bunch of scrawled notes about things I’d like to do or write or think about (chaos!), another folder with all the school-missives from the Denizens and artwork and $DEITY ONLY KNOWS WHAT-ALL…all in the binder with the neat, clean section monthly and daily planning pages at the front, steadfastly ignoring the chaos in the folders behind them, calmly saying, “Yes, yes, but all that aside…you have a dentist appointment on Friday, Boo Bug starts ballet on Monday at 4:00 so no, you can’t meet anybody for coffee that day, and also you had better take that ham out of the freezer today if you intend to serve it on Easter.”

It makes me feel energized and ready to deal with it.

We never could see eye to eye on that. He’d get a nervous twitch whenever he saw my binder sprawled open on my desk; and his planner made me clutch my coffee closer because I lived in mortal dread of the day when I would, in a moment of glorious inattention, douse the thing with both barrels of my double latte.

Which is a long way of saying, Find what works for you, whether it be pantry-organizing or life planning, and run with it. It isn’t about the system, it’s about you. Yes it is. All about you. Your life, your happiness, your ability to get what you want, your hopes and fears and joys and dreams.

The system will just have to mold itself around you.

End of sermon…beginning of journey to office supply store for a new $2 binder. And possibly some Pee-Chee folders. Hallelujah, amen, and let’s get it on…

Juan is also a good friend of mine

This is a long clip from Dexter’s Lab cartoon about…coffee! I saw it some time ago and suddenly I thought to myself, I thought, “Self, I wonder if that’s one that might be up on YouTube…" and hey! It is!

*sniff* It just brings joy to my heart to know that somewhere out there, the folks who write cartoon scripts have lives just like mine...

My favorite line: You see, kids, coffee is what we adults need to get started in the morning…it’s the key to our ignition…you kids don’t need it, nooooooo, you’ve got youth…we adults need the coffee…”

This is not ranting, it’s just wondering…

Coach Susan rather sensibly asked, Wait a minute...How did we get from "my boss, letting me know that I have options with this company. Specifically, if I wanted to talk to him about switching to part time work, you know, so I could get some balance etc. etc., well. We’d work something out. If I wanted to talk about it, he was listening. If not, forget he ever called. It’s just a thought, just so you know, in case." to "He made it clear that he doesn’t believe I could possibly work around a (pre)school schedule reliably enough to suit them."?

Frankly…I’m a little baffled, too. I’m wondering if, between his call Monday and our chat on Wednesday, he regretted having made the offer and decided to change the rules in a way that he knew would make me say, “Never mind! I’ll just be going now…”

It’s one of many ‘what the @*^&@’ theories rattling around in my head.

Maybe I misread his call entirely and it was really supposed to be one of those ‘veiled threat’ things I hear so much about. I’m saying this as if I mean to help you, but what I mean is, Shape up or ship out!

Maybe he really does think that the three to four full day schedule is exactly what the doctor ordered. He’s not a jerk, he really truly isn’t, but he can be rather…intense. His idea of a “light” work week is anything less than sixty hours, so it may well be that the idea of a twenty hour or less workweek is…well, that’s…I mean…Your earth ways are strange to me…explain this, how you say, ‘part time’…

There is also a personality type to consider. I operate very well with a ‘flexible’ (meaning, it may be midnight before I get back to whatever it was I wanted to be doing) schedule, and it doesn’t bother me when others do the same. I developed this ability over the course of having many home-based businesses through the years. I’ve learned to trust in my own ability to get things done.

But I can readily understand why another person faced with an employee doing the ‘eh, I’ll get it done, don’t you worry’ thing might feel…a little less than convinced.

There are also about half a dozen interns starting in the coming weeks – possibly between Monday and Wednesday it was realized just how many bodies were coming on board and parties of the first part asked parties of the second part why they should continue paying someone who commands a pretty good rate when they have two, three interns ready to pay us to do the same thing?

I don’t know. I really don’t know. I was very, very surprised. Caught utterly flat-footed, in fact. Actually rendered speechless, which those of you who know me “in person” can attest, is a very rare occurrence.

And one which I know a lot of you wish would happen far more often. {kiss-kiss, darlings, love you too!}

Oh, just DEAL already…

So I waddled into the office this morning saying to myself, firmly, that I was going to and this time I really mean it! take care of the paperwork issues that have begun overwhelming me in the last few months.

I regarded my desk and began to say, “Heyyyyyyy, that’s not so bad! You can handle this! Ha! No sweat! No problem! No big!!” See?



And then…I looked down.



Meh. And there was more, but honestly I just wasn’t emotionally prepared to put up pictorial proof of just how far behind I have fallen on Such Matters in recent months.

This is precisely the kind of thing that has been sending my stress levels into the stratosphere. As I’ve gone a layer or two into this mess, I find myself wondering if Real Arcade had any cool new games available because…I just don’t want to deal with this.

It’s all important. It all needs to be handled. And it comes in far faster than I can get it out again.

Just like the laundry.

{And then, several hours passed}

OK, see, right in the middle of the whining, it dawned on me that really – blogging about how much I didn’t want to deal with this really wasn’t going to do much about the problem at hand.

Yes, I thought of that all by myself.

I’m clever that way.

Anyway. Since starting this four hours ago, I emptied the shredder basket twice (and need to do it a third time), and the recycling twice, paid roughly $1,700 in medical bills and $2,190 in car insurance and $4.07 to the newspaper (four dollars and 07/100’s, people) (honestly, these are the things that just kind of make me go, Huh?).

Ate a bar of Godiva chocolate I found beneath a pile of receipts. Mmmmm, the rewards of cleaning. Tasty. And not nearly as old as you might think! BONUS!!

Took a deep breath and began putting together an actual Project Folder for the remodeling project. I now have all the bids, business cards, sketches, and notes neatly contained in a very organized repurposed accordion-style folder.

With pink and orange plaid and a big white heart with black polka dots on it. And also a large purple button for the purple elastic to wrap around to close it.

The contractors are going to simply love my Project Folder, doancha think?! My husband burst into laughter when he saw it. So, you know, obviously – it is just right.

I threw away old lipsticks and some Lifesavers which were so old I swear to Dog it would have required carbon dating to determine what decade they came from. I removed approximately 6,276 CDs that someone (*cough-husband-cough*) had dumped on my desk at some point and conveniently forgotten about.

I found a total of five (5) skeins of yarn hiding under the desk. Three cheap acrylic and two semi-cheap wool. Well, my goodness, y’all. The stash, she is sneaking back into the house even faster than anticipated!!

At which point, I had this:



…and this…



I then felt justified in taking a brief break to watch my Eldest playing a video game. I offered many excellent suggestions, which she took in reasonably good grace for a while before turning around in her chair and saying, with remarkable gentleness for a nine year old being annoyed by her geek mother, “Mommy, are you quite sure you don’t have something else you should be doing?”

Humph. Look, all I’m saying is, if you want to kill the Giant Spiders, running away from them isn’t going to help! I propose using either a mace or an axe and whacking the devil out of them until they spray green goo all over the place and lie down like any good (= dead) spider should.

That’s all I’m saying.

Ahem. Anyway, thus scolded by a child who would rather spend time pulling out her own toenails with tweezers than doing her ho-hum-homework, I returned to my desk and the one thing still hanging over me like a leaky sheet full of dog poop: our taxes.

As I expected, we owe significant money this year. Expecting it, of course, does not reduce my ‘oh, come ON!’ whining one little bit. It’s one of the odder of my schizophrenic tendencies: I don’t mind paying my fair share of taxes. It’s a common good thing, and I like to feel as though I’m putting my oar in to keep the country going.

On the other hand…YOU WANT HOW MUCH OF MY MONEY?!?! OH COME ON!!!!!! Isn’t there somebody, you know, wealthier, who could pay this?!?!?!

**sigh**

Oh well. Shutting up, waving flag a bit, being proud of my country (zits and all) and pleased that I made so much money last year and sending my fair share off now.

Which reminds me: I sang America the Beautiful for Boo Bug last week on the way to daycare, and now she demands a performance every morning. America! America! God mend thine every flaw… (including thy overly complicated tax code which makes it all but impossible for Joe A. Citizen to figure their taxes correctly on their own, hallelujah amen…)

So. Now that I have a clean desk, I can get back to what I really need to be focusing on: The post-quitting-my-job budget.

Ay, carumba. Where’s my Tylenol, dudes…?

I will not rant and cry

You know, in terms of crap that can happen to people, I’ve got it easy. I do not have an abusive or indifferent spouse, for one thing. In point of fact, I have a ridiculously loving and supportive spouse, who puts up with my schizophrenic crap in the most easy-going and tolerant manner you could imagine.

He also insists that I am ‘smart’, which is IMHO not exactly as much a given as he seems to think it is.

I live in a nice suburb and for bonus points, we’re stable here. I don’t fear bill collectors, starvation, broken down vehicles on work mornings, drive-by shootings or other things that go !BAM! in the night.

My children are…well, I was going to say ‘healthy’ but then a chorus of coughing broke out in the playroom, so let’s go with ‘reasonably healthy’. The worst thing I have to deal with on that front is vaccinations, which do cause me to melt into a sniveling heap of pathetic loser. Oh. And the occasional head-wound-crazy-glue.

So, really, I don’t feel like I have any right to feel sorry for myself. Which ironically makes me feel even more pathetic when I am feeling put-upon.

Which, uh, I am.

I trekked out to the office to discuss Things with my boss Wednesday. Turns out by ‘part time’, he’s really thinking more along the lines of ‘any three to four full days I’d like and by the way we’d prefer if you came onsite ‘more frequently’ so we can make absolutely sure you are working the whole time, stand over you and otherwise babysit you because you obviously cannot be trusted you can work without distraction.’

So, I’m still paying for full-time childcare, now with less income!, and having the two hour each way drive (because there is literally not even one public transportation option to get from here to there and back again) on top of it to contend with.

He made it clear that he doesn’t believe I could possibly work around a (pre)school schedule reliably enough to suit them.

I’m afraid I rather immaturely stopped talking at this point. It was the deeply engrained motherly advice kicking in: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

Because people, what I wanted to say was not a bit nice. ‘Bitchy’ does not begin to cover it. Some of it he deserved, and some of it he didn’t. But I really wanted to rip him up one side and down the other, and then stomp out and slam the door behind me for good measure.

I began making non-committal noises and doodling on my planner pages, and finally said, “You know what? This is all coming down very suddenly, and the changes we’re talking about would be fairly major for everybody. I don’t know what I could do around childcare for this schedule, and I really need time to think about it all and decide what to do.”

As I have nearly a month’s worth of accrued vacation, we agreed that effectively immediately I would go on administrative leave for a couple weeks to ‘think things through’.

And you know what? I am doing just that.

Specifically, I am thinking through what, exactly, I’m going to do after I’ve officially left this company. Which I had pretty much decided to do by the time I’d hoofed it back to the car. Full time stress for part time pay just doesn’t cut it for me. I can do better.

Thus far, my ‘thinking things through’ goes like this:

1. Spend the next two-three weeks, while on leave but still enjoying daycare, putting together our lives, Den, and firming up my post-work plans.
2. Spend the next three to six months (micro)managing our remodeling project and shoring up the fiscal disaster we’ve undergone since I went back to work, while finalizing what, exactly-precisely, I’d like to do next.
3. And also, get a little more aggressive about my arthritis treatment. This is ridiculous. I refuse to be afraid of a six block walk to and from my car. I used to climb mountains for fun, people – I refuse to become a Hover-Round candidate. Pffffbt! to that!
4. Thumb my nose at the notion that it is “not possible” to take care of business around Denizen (pre)school schedules by succeeding in my own damned home based business, thank you very much Mr. Let Me Tell You How Impossible It Would Be For You To Get Any Meaningful Work Done Unless You Can Have A Full Eight Hours Of Unbroken Concentration.

Yeah. That last one is a little on the vague side at this point. I have a lot of ideas floating around in my head; mostly around things I’ve done before with varying degrees of success. Things that I know could have much more successful, if I hadn’t flitted off to other things. And also, things I can control; for example, if I know I’ve got Spring break coming, I can turn the tap down on my workflow to accommodate having all four Denizens underfoot, all day.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I do know what I will not do.

I will not rant and cry. I’m done with that now. By the time I had made the two hour drive home from the office, the roiling had settled into a tremendous peace.

I’m ready to let it go. Ready to acknowledge that it isn’t working, and isn’t going to work, and that I need to release the job. It belongs to someone else. Someone else will snuggle into it and it will be perfect and they will be happy and find fulfillment in what is, for me, a hair shirt I’ve been torturing myself with for months.

Therefore! I herewith put my best foot forward and, undaunted and somewhat relieved that the hardest part is behind me, declare my intention to move Onward!

Starting with more coffee and also a sausage-mushroom omelet.

In that order.

ONWARD!!!!

If only fishsticks were sought by MoMA

My children often ask me to draw things for them. “Can you draw me a butterfly? Can you draw me a unicorn? Can you draw me the London Bridge?”

Now, like most people, I have certain…limitations.

One of them is that I am a rotten artist.

I mean, I am bad.

I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler. I can’t draw a curved one, either. I can’t even manage ‘random dot’ art, OK?

I am art challenged.

So when you ask me to draw a princess fairy unicorn?

You’re going to get something that looks like Cookie Monster, and I will have no idea why it turned out like that.

This limitation is well-known to my children.

“Honey,” I will say as they rush in clutching markers and construction paper eagerly asking me to draw the Taj Mahal. “Mommy just really isn’t that good at drawing.”

So tonight, I made fishsticks. (Yes. Dinner of champions. Don’t pester me, I’m under a lot of stress right now.) And, as I usually do to hide the fact that this is actually Mommy taking a night off from making, you know, ‘dinner’ dress things up a little, I arranged the fishsticks in festive patterns and drew squiggles and dots and whatnot on the plates.

Boo Bug was delighted, because she has hated everything I’ve made for dinner lately. Roasted garlic pork with twice-baked potatoes? Bleh! Grilled steak with potatoes gratin? YUCK! Sausage in polenta? ACK!!

She swarmed into her chair and regarded her plate happily.

“Mommy!” she exclaimed. “You are an artist! You’re a food artist!”

Hey! You know what?

Yes. Yes I am.

Just, uh, don’t ask me for fairy unicorn princess tater tots, OK?

Joy

So there I was. Chewing my fingernails to the nubs worrying about all the what-ifs and buts and if onlys and wait and ack and argh and oooooooh the sheer drama of it all…when...

...behold! The email server hath delivered unto me…joy, people.

Joy.

Someone I know who has been keeping the faith forever through loss after loss, disappointment after disappointment, waiting and wanting and wishing and hoping JUST HAD TWINS!!!!!

Healthy, beautiful twins.

It is delicious. Absolutely dark-chocolate-for-dinner delicious. I wish it wouldn’t be a major invasion of their privacy to name names and share pictures, because people! This has tickled me right down to my toes.

I have seen the pictures. Mommy = GORGEOUS! Babies = PERFECT! Tama’s Tear Ducts = APPARENTLY CAN STILL PRODUCE TEARS OF JOY!!

Attitude = Adjusted. Can’t worry, too busy squealing and yarn shopping, because…

Knitting Needles = ITCHY!!!!

So, I think it’s a safe bet that no further work will be gotten out of me until after I have placed my yarn order…

(Yay! Twins! Eeeeee!)

(…must…express…love…with…wool!...)