Stop and Smell The Crayons

We have a little craft cabinet in the playroom where we keep all the coloring books and markers and stickers and gluesticks and pipecleaners and playdoh and WOW, no wonder that cabinet is always kind of a huge mess.  But a good, fun mess that SMELLS LIKE CRAYONS.  Mmmmm, nothing better than that.  The last time I was in a craft store, I was all stressed out about some job I was trying to get finished and I was hurrying past the kids’ section.  And I spied one of those 64-Crayon boxes, you know the ones . . . with the sharpener in the back.  So I stopped and walked over to it and opened it up.  I took a deep breath in, savoring that crayon smell, and things seemed a little better all of a sudden.  It’s not going to change the world or anything, smelling a new box of crayons, but it will help you stop for a second and collect yourself.

So anyway, the craft cabinet is great because we shove all our crafts in there.  Except lately, I’ve been leaving a box of markers and a coloring book out on the floor in my office.  When Zach is reading with his Daddy after dinner, Eli and Sophie have gotten in the habit of coming in here if I’m working and they just sit on the floor and color.  So I’m sitting here typing or printing or some other kind of cut-and-paste-sometimes-I’m-just-pretending-I’m-still-in-Kindergarten-type work and they are coloring their little coloring book, quiet as a pair of little mice.  It’s really nice, in that way it’s nice to be in the same room as someone else, both of you working in a companionable silence.  Even though there’s no talking or interaction, it’s nice to just have someone else there.  And for some of that time, I end up just stopping what I’m doing and watching them, all quiet and earnest in their project.  Watching them like that is some time very well-spent.  Here’s what I’m seeing right now when I look down:

By the way, I use that term “my office” very loosely here.  My office is the back half of our mudroom.  So I share it with the washer and dryer and all the coats and backpacks and, you know, mudroom stuff.  In fact, if we pull back from that prior photo just a little, you’ll see what kind of operation I’m really running over here, in my “office.”

Well, the dog’s gotta eat somewhere, right?

Hip hop

I’m taking a hip hop class.  So is my 8 year old son.  It’s not the same class, though it’s the same studio and the same teacher (Karin and she’s fantastic, FANTASTIC I say).

It started like this.  Zach and I started watching So You Think You Can Dance together two years ago (this is NOT Dancing With The Stars; it is a different show entirely).  We got TOTALLY into it and we’d talk about which dancers were the best and who should get kicked off and whether we agreed with the judges.  Zach’s favorite dance, to this day, was this group number where they were all dressed like zombies and were all bloody and creepy (I need to show him the Thriller video, right?).  And just like the rest of America, we also started to learn at least a TINY bit about the various dancing styles.  Hip hop was ALWAYS our favorite.  We’d rewind it and watch it again and again and we’d try the moves out and really it was all very bonding for us.

So I found out about the hip hop class for his age and asked him if he wanted to take it.  Oh THE SMILE on that kid’s face when I asked him that.  So we went in to sign him up and we were so palpably excited about it that the woman working there looked at me and said “Well you KNOW we have an adult hip hop class too, don’t you?”  Hot Diggety, we’re in business.

He goes Monday and I go Tuesday.  We both come out of class all giddy and happy.  We compare moves at home.  And I think, just maybe, that we’re even both getting a little better.  I’m telling you, IT IS CHOCK FULL OF FABULOSITY.

I felt kind of silly about signing up, seeing as how I’ve never taken a dance class in my life.  That and the fact that when I tell people I’m taking it, they laugh, like maybe I’m making a joke.  So I say “You should try it with me; it’s really, really fun.”  And they mumble something “mumble mumble mumble  . . . out of my comfort zone  . . . mumble mumble mumble.”

Here’s some big news.  Learning to dance hip hop at age 38 is not in MY comfort zone either, by any stretch of the imagination.  But isn’t that the point?  Just to at least GLANCE outside our comfort zone every so often?  It’s not like I’m committing to climbing Mt. Everest or something here.  Just a small reach outside the zone, that’s all that’s needed.  And that’s why this class was so perfect.  Karin told us in our first class that hip hop is challenging because it’s counter-intuitive to the way we are used to moving.  You move your body unnaturally and you shift your weight around to the opposite of what you are used to.  It messes with your balance.  So even for a person who actually has dance experience, hip hop is out of the comfort zone, making it the perfect class to start with.  Because at least initially, we were all lost.  But if you can get used to it and learn the moves, that’s why it LOOKS SO COOL, because it’s unexpected, the way the moves go.  And by the way, I don’t have it down or anything.  But Karin does and it looks amazing.

The other reason I get a kick out of it is because I feel like “I’m taking a hip hop class” could be the new “I’m taking a tap dance class.”  I seem to recall when I was growing up, there were moms who got all crazy and took tap dancing.  Wasn’t that, like, a thing?

But mainly, it’s an hour a week where I get some exercise, laugh a lot (and all at myself which really is SO good for us) AND give myself some great material for bonding with Zach.  And, really, anything to give me an excuse to listen to Timbaland.

Monday, Monday

6:00 – 9:00 a.m.:

Wake-up.  Sophie is next to me, her right leg somehow inside my pajama bottoms.  Untangle.  Start the day.

Start a load of laundry.  Let the dog out.  Start the coffee.  Ask kids to get dressed.

Coffee is setting in.  Ask kids to get dressed, but this time with feeling.  Check email.  Fish dirty jeans out of hamper for Zach to wear because it’s 48 degrees outside and even though he has 17 different kinds of shorts, he only has one pair of jeans that fits.  Tweet about it (but a funnier version).

Give Zach breakfast (Fruity Pebbles DON’T YOU JUDGE ME) then he’s out the door with Daddy for school.

Feed Sophie and Eli breakfast (yogurt, then Fruity Pebbles cereal SEE ABOVE), ask them repeatedly to please put on the clothes THAT I HAVE LAID OUT FOR THEM ON THEIR BEDS.

Put on running clothes (optimism!), brush teeth (it’s the small victories, really, that feel so good), answer emails that have started coming in about school stuff and board meetings and pee-wee basketball.  Stand at kitchen island and make appointments to have our carpets cleaned, my hair cut, the dog’s annual trip to the vet.  Beg the children to put on their clothes.

Put Sophie’s clothes on her.  Put Eli’s clothes on him.  Murmur things under my breath like ” . . .6 year old who won’t dress himself . . . where have I gone wrong . . . it’s all my fault, it really is . . . “

Take them to school.

9:00 a.m. – Noon:

GO RUNNING.  Does anyone really doubt that should be in all-caps?  Especially given the 60 degree weather with not one cloud in the sky?

Go get new cleats for the boys (cut to me, eleven hours later, with the one old, dirty cleat that I took in to determine sizes still in my purse).

Buy jeans for Zach.  Realize they all need clothes.  Buy them all clothing (huge sale this week at Old Navy, people!).

Other random and bothersome errands that didn’t involve fun or interest of any kind.

Noon-2:00p.m.:

Go pick up Sophie from school.  Make us lunch (vegetable soup, the alphabet kind but still, makes up just a BIT for the Fruity Pebbles).  Spell out our names with the letters in the soup; general merriment ensues.

Tell Sophie it’s time for ballet.  She flips out that she DOESN’T WANT TO GO TO BAWAY.  I HATE BAWAY.  PLEASE MOMMY PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME GO TO BAWAY.  I fold like a wet noodle, too tired to put up the fight today.  Maybe next week.  But probably not.

2:00 – 6:00 p.m.:

Go pick up Eli.  Take Eli and Sophie to my mom’s house for their weekly Yay We Get To Hang Out With Dammah time.  More general merriment ensues (today involved coloring, raspberry sorbet and cartoons . . . I mean, seriously, it’s a wonder they were willing to come back home at all).

Go pick up Zach.  Take him to Hip Hop Class.  During the class, go get a cup of tea next door.  Take my laptop in to work on a project due Wednesday.  Instead, sit there with my laptop closed, drinking my tea and looking out the window.  Almost fall asleep.

Go get Eli and Sophie.  Go pick up Zach from class.  Go home.  Zach does his homework without being asked.  Without being asked.  GOOD BOY.

Feed them dinner in roughly 7 minutes (hot dogs and apple slices, meh, it could be worse) while changing Eli for his first  basketball practice.  Pile them in the car, take them to basketball practice.  My husband meets us there.  Eli loves the practice.  LOVES it.

6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.:

Home.  Change laundry.  Fold laundry.  CURSE LAUNDRY.  Wonder why in the world I thought the kids needed any new clothes with all these OTHER clothes all over the place.  Start bath for kids.  My husband finishes their bath while I look through backpacks and decide which art from today to keep and which to ditch.  Pick up legos.

Read books to Sophie.  Fall asleep in the chair with her on my lap.  Take one of those annoying 17 minute naps.

SHOWER (really if that’s all I did today, it would have been a red-letter day).

All clean and cozy in my jammies.  Then I remember my promise to myself to blog more this week.

10:00 p.m.:

And so here I am.  And that was my day.  There was stuff I didn’t include, like calls to friends and sitting in carpool lines and chatting with my mom in her driveway and getting the mail and on and on and now you see why I was leaving some of this stuff out because then it’d be even longer and more boring than it is right now.

So it wasn’t glamorous.  It wasn’t easy.  And it wasn’t even one of my more busy days.  I had a to-do list for today and about 20% of it got done, though 20% is actually pretty good for knocking stuff off a to-do list.  It’s like batting averages.  Even the best guys don’t even come close to hitting the ball half the time.  What did happen was this:  Laughing with Sophie over vegetable soup letters, being so proud of Zach for doing his homework without being asked and watching Eli try a sport he’s never played before with confidence and a sense of joy.  Between those things and the 20% AND getting a shower?  C’mon! I’m pinching myself over here.

Meanwhile, my husband just walked in here and asked me if I ate any dinner.  After a long pause while I tried to remember, we figured I must not have.  Now I think I’m too sleepy to eat . . . though Fruity Pebbles sound pretty good.

How was YOUR day?  You know I’d love to hear about it.

Obligatory Halloween Post

Okay QUICK.  If I don’t post these Halloween pictures tonight, I’ve lost my chance. It already feels like it was lifetimes ago so if I wait until tomorrow everyone will be all HALLOWEEN? WHAT? I’M TOO BUSY DECORATING MY CHRISTMAS TREE TO BOTHER WITH HALLOWEEN PICTURES.

I dressed up as a kitty cat.  I want to add a disclaimer because I usually like to sort of go-all-out for Halloween and the “kitty cat” is always the lame-o costume some mom wears at the last minute by putting on all black and drawing on some whiskers (either that or it’s the SUPER-SEXY cat costume but firstly, I’m WAY past pulling that off and secondly, Halle Berry ruined it for any other woman, ever).  But anyway, Sophie decided SHE wanted to be a kitty cat and then she asked ME to be her kitty-cat-mommy.  The point is there is no possible way to say no to this:

And so it came to be that I was a kitty cat, too.  We also had a ninja and a biker.  Oh, and for a very brief time, a little dog also dressed as a biker.  But as you can see from the photo, she wasn’t too happy about it.

I’m gonna keep that photo around for the next time someone claims that dogs don’t have facial expressions.

The trick-or-treating was indescribably great.  Kids were laughing and running wild from house to house.  And all the parents would stand at the curb and watch the kids run up to the door, giggling with their friends, and yell “Trick or Treat!” and then run back and show us what they got.  You know what it was?  IT WAS REALLY FUN.

But the best part, the part my kids talk about for the entire month preceding Halloween, is coming back home.  We all sit on the front porch and the kids empty their bags to check out their haul.  And we eat candy.

We eat LOTS of candy.

Because here’s the thing.  We used to try to limit it and then parse out the bag piece by piece for, really, like several WEEKS until eventually we are getting ready to celebrate Thanksgiving and I finally throw it out because I’m so sick of looking at those Halloween bags on the kitchen counter.  So now, we let them eat all the candy they want on Halloween night.  NO LIMIT.  Which is very freeing, actually.  All night long, the kids are asking Can I eat this? and We’re saying You sure can! So they gorge themselves until they pretty much pass out from exhaustion.  And then we keep the bags around for a few obligatory days, and after that, well, the candy just magically fades away . . .

So we had a GRAND time.  And I KNOW we had fun because we woke up this morning with wigs strewn about the house, a candy hangover and make-up still on our faces.  That’s remnants of a GOOD party, folks.

I hope y’all had a grand time as well!  And maybe got to relax just a little today because P.S. it is November 1st.  That officially means you have just enough time to take a few breaths and turn around twice before THANKSGIVINGCHRISTMASANDAHAPPYNEWYEAR is here.

By Golly

Here’s the thing.  We write these entries, us bloggers, and even though we still sort of can’t believe anyone is reading them, we hit “publish” and send them out into the world.  And then we wait.  Or at least that’s what I do, I wait (while going about my life, of course. I don’t literally just sit here at my computer and WAIT, at least not all the time).  For what, you may ask?  Well, specifically, I am waiting for feedback in the form of tweets or emails or face-to-face or someone writing on my facebook wall or, of course, comments.  More generally, I’m waiting for . . . what, exactly?  I was going to write validation or approval, but that’s not quite right.  Too needy.  It’s more that I’m waiting for that connection, for someone to let me know that for a brief moment, the space between us was bridged.

It’s not that I wouldn’t write if no one was reading it because I would.  I’ve done that my whole life, just written things down.  It’s necessary.  And it’s rewarding all by itself.  But NOT as rewarding as someone reading it and having a truly authentic response to it.

The first person to have that kind of response to my writing was my mom.  When I was little, I’d write these stories and we’d sit on her bed and I would read them to her.  And she would have these very effusive reactions, like she’d applaud me and say “I loved it!  I want to hear more” or she’d have this big smile on her face and say “Fabulous.  It’s just fabulous.”  And she always did that for me.  I don’t remember a single time in my whole life that I wanted to read something to her that she didn’t stop whatever she was doing and listen to me.  These days, parenting books tell mommies and daddies to FOSTER THEIR KIDS’ CREATIVITY.  My mom knew that by instinct I guess because that’s definitely what she was doing.  She saw something that I loved to do (and was maybe even a little tiny bit good at doing) and she gave me lots of positive reinforcement for doing it.  AND BY GOLLY IT WORKED.

When I was in high school, I wrote a lot of poetry (hey, it was the 80’s; we all did things we regret).  My mom noticed that this local magazine was soliciting poets to send in their work for possible publication.  She showed me the magazine and encouraged me to send in some poems.  Well, that seemed CRAZY and SCARY but she ended up talking me into it.  We went through my poems and picked out a few together and I typed them out (on a typewriter, hello 1986) and mailed them in.  AND BY GOLLY THEY GOT PUBLISHED.

After that, when my mom would introduce me to people, at some point in the conversation she’d say “She’s a writer.”  And my heart would kind of pound and I would blush and feel like I was some kind of impostor, someone just pretending to be a writer.  Later I would say “Mom, why do you say that?  I’m not a writer.”  And she’d say “Oh, you’re a writer all right.”  AND BY GOLLY, I STARTED TO, JUST MAYBE, BELIEVE HER.

Maybe that’s why I love to write so much.  It’s definitely why I love getting feedback.  That feedback comes in many forms.  When I was in college, I was enrolled in a writing seminar where we had an assignment each week and on the day of class, we would sit around this big beautiful antique table in a room on campus that had stained glass windows.  The sun would pour in those windows and we’d go around the table and read what we had written.  Out loud.  It was terrifying.  And amazing.  We’d give each other feedback, some good and some not so good, but we’d all keep writing.  About two-thirds of the way through the semester, I read a piece I’d written that was very raw and honest and that I felt pretty vulnerable about reading aloud.  When I finished, everyone at the table was quiet.  After a while, one person looked at me and said “Yes.”  That is one Yes I won’t be forgetting.  Ever.

I guess this little essay would be more effective if it was in the liner notes of some best-selling novel and I was some outta-control-successful writer who was thanking everyone who ever believed in me.  As it is, I’m just another blogger trying to carve out my little slice of time to write, hoping to find some readers out there who might relate to something I have to say.

So, yeah, I still have trouble thinking of myself as a writer, despite all my mom’s hard work to the contrary.  And she’s working on it still; she calls or emails me anytime I’ve gone more than 2 days without blogging, wondering when the next installment is coming.  And I tell her, or at least I try to tell her, how much that means to me.  It authenticates me as a writer when she does that, when she lets me know that the first thing she does every morning when she turns on her computer is check to see if I’ve written anything new.  Because what does it mean to be a writer?  Does it mean you get paid to write?  God, I hope not.  That’s a pretty bright line and I fall on the non-writer side of it.

I don’t know how to define writer.  But I do know I love to do it.  Writing makes me feel whole and connected to the world.  It is a way to document my life, to write a sort of history for myself and my family.  Sometimes I imagine my kids’ kids’ kids’ kids reading this stuff and feeling connected to a great-great grandmother they never knew.  Even if the writing isn’t all that great (and is, as is usually the case, rather sappy and rambling), what if I am able, somehow, to give them a sense of our family and how we spent our days?  What if some great-great-great-great granddaughter reads something I wrote and feels, oh I don’t know, like a KINDRED SOUL.  You have to admit that’d be PRETTY DARN WONDROUS.

Well, this was a very long (and didn’t even have any pictures, though I have a feeling I’ll make up for that tomorrow with Halloween photos) way of saying two things.  One, thank you to my mom for all the times you called and said “Oh you need to help me write something, I know you can make it sound just right.”  And all the times you told me over the years when your birthday was coming up “Don’t buy me anything; just write me a letter or a story or a poem, just something written by you.”  Thank you, Mom, for the times when I handed you something to read, you read it in silence, then looked up at me and I could tell by the look in your eyes that I pegged it.

And secondly, thank-you to anyone who has gotten this far in this entry because MY GOSH, I DO GO ON AND ON.  But seriously, I look at my little stats page every morning to see how many times my blog was visited the day before.  And even though some of that number are people who accidently got sent to my blog by googling “King Julian” and “Ben 10″ and so probably click right off immediately, I know some of you read every post.  It just means more to me than I can even try to say.  I owe ya, I really do.

Going for “not half-bad”

Well, it seems that writing a blog entry is NOT like riding a bike.  Really, NOTHING at all like it because it turns out that if I go for a while without writing a blog entry, I DO, in fact, forget how to do it.  So indulge me getting through this rather clumsy entry while I get my blog-legs back.  I won’t be gone that long again; I missed writing A WHOLE LOT.  And SO, on to today’s entry, wherein I ask this pertinent question:

Have you ever gone from this

to this

in just a matter of seconds?  Probably not lately.  Since adults are, you know, supposed to have some semblance of control over their emotions, particularly when someone is standing in front of them with a camera.  I mean, I’d be lying if I said that didn’t happen to me on the inside occasionally.  Maybe more than occasionally.  Probably.

But anyway, the natural roller-coastering of life is so extreme with little kids.  Whether they are belly-laughing or totally content and quiet, we are always just a fraction of a second away from complete tears and chaos.  It’s the difference between the kid playing with the balloon and the moment right after the balloon pops.  It is what simultaneously drives parents crazy and also makes us break down when we imagine them all grown up and in control of when they do or don’t cry.

And so our days are filled with ups, downs, more ups, more downs, a few quiet moments and LOTS of loud ones.  The moments that make me smile these days?  Zach being just ten pages away from finishing a 217 page novel, his first of that length.  Looking over to see Eli teaching Sophie to make a paper airplane.  How Zach and I are both enrolled in hip hop classes and sometimes after dinner, we compare the moves we learned that week.  Sophie sitting at the piano, saying “Do you want a song about kitty cats or zombies or God?  Just choose.”  Or Eli’s sense of justice when he decided that the punishment for breaking a pinky promise is that you still get to go fishing but you don’t ever catch any fish.  Or when Zach and I were walking toward the backdoor and saw Sophie figure out the child-proof doorknob right in front of our very eyes, causing ME to stop mid-step and causing HIM to reach up and pat me on the back.  Zach knew I’d be sad that she was big enough to do that, he just knew without me even saying a word, and I saw right then that he’d be empathetic to people his whole life long.  And, of course, all the laughing.  And the dancing.  And the snuggling.  Oh, in the name of all that is good in this world, THE SNUGGLING.

And the moments that have me  all GRRRRR when they happen but I’ll probably miss in ten years when my kids are pretending they don’t even know me?  When they hand me their (chewed) gum.  Or trash, when they HAND ME TRASH.  And the way I no longer fully relax when lying on the couch because as soon as I do, one of them will jump on me.  Hard and with a knee to my ribs.  How they follow me from room to room, without even realizing that they are doing it, until I break down and lock a door behind me for just the tiniest slice of peace.  Eli refusing to pee anywhere but the backyard.  Zach having the world’s most brutal-sounding fake cry AND THEN HIM TEACHING IT TO SOPHIE.  Or just the fact that I’m perched on a stool in the bathroom typing this while my kids are in the bath and they’re splashing so hard that some water GOT ON MY LAPTOP (I won’t miss placing my sweet, wonderful laptop in harm’s way but I might miss sitting here like this with them as my soundtrack, even though this rickity little stool is really uncomfortable and my laptop starts to burn the tops of my thighs after a ridiculously short amount of time).  Or going to the bathroom with all three of them in there with me or turning socks right-side-out or making a dinner none of them will even try or when they –OKAY I BETTER STOP or this paragraph is going to be so much longer than the other one that what started as a sweet, sentimental post will end up cynical and bitter and all WHY ME?

And so we come to the last paragraph, in which I usually try to gracefully tie up loose ends, tug at your heart strings one more time and maybe even make you laugh, nod and think Well I guess that’s not half-bad, maybe I’ll tune in again sometime.  BUT it seems I have gone so long without posting that I’ve forgotten how to do it, this closing paragraph.  SO.  Um . . . Call me?

Two-Way Mirror

I took this picture with my phone a few weeks ago.

It’s Eli and his buddy Will and they are watching their little sisters in ballet class by looking through the two-way mirror.  This is usually where the moms sort of huddle during class and watch their daughters learn to dance (can I mention here that I don’t understand why it’s called a two-way mirror and not a one-way mirror?).  The two-way mirror is especially nice in this instance because I suspect the boys might not be so willing to watch if their sisters actually KNEW they were watching, KNEW they were interested.  In fact the first thing the boys said when they came up to the window is “But they can’t SEE us, can they?”

So even though it’s blurry and the quality is crap, I love this picture.  I love it for the same reason I love watching Sophie run around on the sidelines of Eli’s soccer games or Zach’s football games.  I’m always completely charmed by the tagging-along of one sibling to another sibling’s activity.  I think it is because it all has a team mentality about it.  Like, okay we do YOUR thing then we do MY thing then we do HIS thing and on and on.  And through it all, we stick together.  We support each other just by virtue of being present.

Alright, gotta get my little team in gear this morning.  Happy Sunday!

Saturday, October 17th

You see that, up there?  That is thing of beauty.  We have a calendar on our fridge and that is a picture of today, Saturday, October 17th.  What makes that little rectangle so remarkable is that it is the only day of the entire month that there is NOT something written in.  Which, aside from being sort of really pathetic, is FABULOUS NEWS.

Today.

No plans.

YES.

Now of course you know me better than that.  Just because the rectangle doesn’t have anything written in it doesn’t mean there’s nothing that needs to be done.  THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO, of course.  But there is nothing that we have committed to doing.  And so I will force myself to ignore the laundry baskets toppling over with clothes and I will let the mouse go one more day in a cage that needs to be cleaned and BLAH BLAH BLAH.  So how does a family of five spend a Saturday with no plans?  Well, here’s what we are doing this morning:

Zach is reading a book he bought at book fair yesterday.  And he loves it SO MUCH that he is not even bothering to sit down; he’s just standing in the kitchen, reading.  This reminds me so much of myself at that age that I keep walking up to him and just watching him.  Who knew you could get so much joy from just watching someone else read?

And sweet Eli?  He knows better than anyone in this house how to truly relax.  So he is watching the sunbeams shine through the window.  Soaking it up.  Whenever I walk by, he waxes philosophical about something.  Like Star Wars or best friends or playing soccer or pinky promises.  Or, most recently, if he can have another bowl of cereal.  He’s solving the world’s problems, rock-solidly and one issue at a time.

Speaking of cereal, this is what Saturday morning breakfast looks like when Mommy sends Daddy to the store and tells him we need some cereal:

I can pretend I’m surprised that he didn’t show back up with bran flakes or something but honestly, IS there a better way to start the day than with a heaping bowl of Cocoa Krispies?

And then there’s Sophie.  She is sitting in my office with all my stamps and ink, making pictures.  She’s crafting!  And in her nightgown, just like Mommy does:

I would show you a photo of myself, but somehow me in my office in MY nightgown isn’t as precious.  In fact at 11 a.m., it’s bordering on weird.  And the man of the house?  Well, apparently there is some sort of college football game on today that is worth watching (Hook ‘Em Horns).

So for now I’ll just finish this, TURN OFF THE COMPUTER and go play.  I suggest you do the same.

Death by Migraine?

Migraine.  Even the word sounds painful, doesn’t it? Miiiii-graaaaane [insert most god-awful sound you can imagine here for full effect].

So who out there has them, these migraines?  I’ve had them on and off for about 15 years.  I got a reprieve from them when I was pregnant or nursing, which I basically did for 6 years straight, and it was GLORIOUS.  Almost glorious enough to just keep on having babies indefinitely.  You know . . . almost.

Here’s the thing about migraines.  They hurt like the dickens (though they are almost worth having just to be able to use that phrase hurt like the dickens).  Everyone knows that, right?  It’s like childbirth that way — the entire world knows that IT HURTS.  And like throwing out your back or passing a stone or knocking your shoulder out of its socket, it’s a certain kind of brutal hurt that you can’t imagine until you’ve been through it.  But because everyone everywhere has heard someone bitch incessantly about migraines, we all know they hurt.

I started getting a migraine three days ago.  Through some sort of crazy maneuver which no doubt had to do with the migraine itself, I kept thinking it was just a really bad headache.  But when I woke up on day three, I knew it for what it was.  Which is, quite possibly, the 10th circle of Hell.  I know Dante only wrote about 9 levels of Hell but this migraine hurt SO BADLY that it felt like the Devil himself had a vice grip on my brain.  And then he took some sort of metal stake and started hammering it into my head, over and over, hard as he could.  Aaaagh.

By the afternoon, I was toast.  Just . . . done.  This migraine was so far worse than any other one I’d ever had; it was in a different universe.  I couldn’t complete a thought or put words together or even stand up without gripping my head with both my hands with as much force as I could, trying to even out the pressure.  So here’s what happened.  My sweet friend Jill took two of my kids and my sweet friend Elizabeth had her mom pick up the third one.  Then Elizabeth drove me to my neurologist because I realized that trying to drive myself to the doctor like this would have been like trying to drive myself to the hospital when I was in the throes of labor.  Elizabeth was calm and sweet and perfect during the completely hellish and brutal drive to the doctor’s office.  And she later told me that I was pretty much babbling incoherently, which she attributed (correctly) to what she called my “inability to manage the pain.”  By the way, that phrase, inability to manage the pain, is officially the most descriptive thing ever said by anyone.

So we got to the doctor and he took one look at me and had the nurse put me in a dark, quiet room to lie down.  Then he proceeded to give me the BIGGEST, HURTIEST SHOT I’ve ever gotten.  In the butt, of course.  But I was so relieved to be taking some action, any action at all, AGAINST THE MIGRAINE that I started crying.  And more babbling.  Crying and babbling to the doctor about how much I appreciated him and his big, hurty shot and crying and babbling to the nurse about how yes, I had a friend who could drive me home.

After a brief regression where I threw up on my own driveway while getting out of Elizabeth’s car (that’s one of those moments any of you can remind me of whenever you feel I need to be humbled), I started feeling better pretty quickly.  I got in bed and slept two hours.  Then I woke up, ate some soup that my husband brought me and then I went back to sleep.  By this morning, the migraine HAD SUBSIDED and was just a dull headache.

And by this afternoon, I was feeling like a human being again.  Which, very fortunately for me, meant I got to go with Zach to his school’s book fair.  And Zach was so excited.  He was walking around with his best friend, picking out books to read (BECAUSE HE CAN READ NOW, which is so, like, YES) and it was all just . . . perfect.  Here, see for yourself:

So my point is WOW, what a difference a day makes.  Or, put another way, if you are having one of your worst days ever, pick friends like Jill and Elizabeth who swoop in and take over when you’re babbling and crying.  And, equally important, pick a doctor that always knows when you need one of those big, hurty kind of shots in the butt.

Trapped

So there are coyotes being spotted in our neighborhood.  We’ve been hearing this for years, actually, but lately it seems that every single person on the block has seen a coyote, recently and very close by.  I feel pretty sure our cat Jack fell prey to a coyote a couple of years ago and really the cats in this neighborhood do go missing a lot.  A LOT.  So, yes, maybe coyotes.

My husband heard about the coyotes and pulled out our trusty have-a-heart trap over the weekend.  The first night we caught this crazy wild creature:

Yes, that’s our other cat, Broussard.  He is 12 years old and very odd.  Like even odder than cats usually are.  So getting caught in a trap in his own yard is about par for the course for Broussard, our talking cat.  And by “talking” I mean when we hold him when he doesn’t want to be held or when we shave him for the summer or when we put him in a carrier to go to the vet, he just lets out this very plaintive Noooooooo.  Noooooooo. Just plain as day.  Now I know what you’re thinking.  You’re wondering how we can shave our own cat and then call HIM odd, all with a straight face.  But if you could see him in person, you’d see that he is ALL HAIR.  So in the summer, he just gets SO HOT and he’s out there in the yard, panting.  So I drag him inside (Nooooooo Nooooooo) and get the grooming razor out.  And I shave him.  And shave him.  And shave him.  AND SHAVE HIM.  The cat is like 98% fur so by the time I’m done shaving him, he’s the size of a newborn kitten.  AND PURRING, BY THE WAY.  Because yes, once he relaxes a little, he realizes the electric razor is really just like a little back massager for him and mmmmmmmm he looooooooves it.

So Night Two of the trap, we bring Broussard inside for the evening and we end up catching this guy:

Later our new neighbor told us he was drinking his morning coffee, talking on the phone and he happened to look out the window as our family was standing in our driveway releasing a raccoon.  Which I think he thought was a tad odd (and he doesn’t even KNOW about how we shave our talking cat), but hopefully odd in a good way because we think he and his family are really great.  Did I mention that the last time my husband was out of town, I forgot to take the trash out and heard the trash truck in the morning and rushed out in some god-awful thing I had slept in, about to pull all sorts of muscles trying to get our ridiculously heavy trashcan to the curb before the truck passed our house . . . only to find out that the trash can WAS ALREADY IN PLACE.  Our new neighbor had noticed it wasn’t out and put it out for us, all the while restoring my faith and hope in humanity.  By the way.

And then Night Three yielded us this little beast:

A possum (also known as “opossum” but I’ll be damned if I’m going to use that BIZARRE word).  He was so busy finishing off the food in the bowl he didn’t even bother to play dead.  Is it just ridiculous of me to say that I think he’s kind of cute?

Night Four caught us another possum:

He looks even younger than the first one so I’m just going to say outright that he is FOR SURE cute.  CUTE LITTLE POSSUM.

And every morning when we open the trap in the driveway, the animals walk out, sort of blink and look around . . . and run right back into our front yard.  Seriously, they ALL THREE ran and hid in our front bushes.  So I don’t know that, you know, they LEARNED anything from the experience but I’m glad to see they consider our yard some sort of sanctuary.  Though I can’t imagine Broussard is too pleased with that idea.  Do the indignities against our poor cat never end?  It isn’t enough to be chased around by the kids and the dog all the time AND be subjected to a seasonal shaving.  But now we add in to the mix that our yard is home to, well, basically a bunch of VARMINTS.  But through it all, Broussard still loves us.  We know this because he leaves us thoughtful little gifts on our front porch like rats and baby birds.  Dead ones.  Sweet, right?

Noooooooo.  Noooooooo.

Magic

Hi, remember me?  I haven’t gone back to actually check but I think this is the longest I’ve gone without writing an entry since I started writing this blog 10 months ago.  This should give you some indication of the kind of week I’m having.  Well, that and the fact that if I don’t write “Take a shower” down on my to-do list, then it’s just not getting done.  But DON’T WORRY this won’t be a blog entry about how busybusybusybusy I am.  How totally annoying is it to hear people talk about how busy they are, right?  Suffice to say we’d have to be magic to be able to get it all done.  I mean just in the little while I’ve been writing this, I’ve managed to miss a deadline (self-imposed, but still) for getting something else done.  But I don’t care!  Because in an absolutely FANTASTIC turn of events in the last few days, I have had a number of people ask me why I haven’t written anything this week and asking WHEN I was planning on posting a new entry!  SAY WHAT?  This was . . . unexpected.  After I got over the initial “Really?  You noticed?” phase, then I got a little worried.  You know how they say that if you keep saying no when people invite you to things then eventually you stop getting invited?  Well so I got a little worried that if these people kept going to my blog and not seeing a new entry, they’d eventually stop even checking.  And that made me feel all YEEESH, I BETTER GET WRITING, WRITING, WRITING, OH JUST ABOUT SOMETHING . . . ANYTHING, REALLY.  Unfortunately, that kind of approach occasionally results in me writing a very scattered post with no cohesiveness but with lots of words in ALL CAPS and maybe some cute pictures thrown in.  SUCH AS THIS:

See what I did there? I named the entry Magic and then I included a picture of Sophie pulling a rabbit out of a hat . . .  Aaaaaand, it’s often at this point that I start to wonder if I should delete what I’ve written so far and start again tomorrow. BUT NO, I will forge ahead.  Who’s with me?

Luckily for everyone, I went for a run yesterday for the first time in two weeks.  A run is a guaranteed way to be inspired about something; it just is.  I went my usual route, ran across the 1st Street Bridge, scanning for new gratiffiti as usual but not spotting any.  So I kept running around the loop.  I sprinted the final part then slowed down as I reached the Austin High Bridge, where I always stop in the middle and pull myself together.  I stand in the middle of that bridge right next to one of the big poles that holds it up and I catch my breath and force myself to be still for a few moments. And yesterday,  I saw this on the pole:

Now I guess this was done using a stencil so it’s not very easy to read but the image has got to one of the more well-known book covers anywhere in the world.  Of course this is from that loved-the-world-over gem of a book, The Little Prince, written in 1943 by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and though I had trouble deciphering the actual words on the pole, I know that the quote is  It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye (or as it was written in the original On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux, which I include only to add some sophistication to my blog in the form of a beautiful foreign language that I myself do not speak).

Who did this?  It’s one thing to have a sharpie in your bag and stop on the 1st Street Bridge and write Rachel is a Princess, but to go to the trouble to use a stencil?  And spray paint it on a pole where you have to climb over the rail and stand on a tiny strip of concrete that is several stories above the water?  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not glorifying graffiti by saying I’m impressed when these punks paint gang signs in hard-to-reach places. That just means they are punks who are also idiots.  I’m just saying in this instance, I’m curious as to who is such a study in contrasts that they would go to this bridge at night with their spray paint can, look all around and make sure no one is watching so they don’t get caught, and then put up that sweet image atop those inspiring words, those words we’ve all heard quoted our whole lives, then finish the job, climb back over the rail and run off into the night.  I’m all HMMMMM about it.

Then again maybe it was magic.