It's been a long summer. It's kind of continuing to be a long summer, for a billion reasons, and some of those reasons are boring and mundane, and others are heartbreaking and too hard to talk about, and still others just leave me feeling like a broken record. (Someday when we look back, will we refer to 2018 as The Year America Became A Flaming Dumpster Fire, or does that designation rightfully belong to 2016, with 2018 being more like The Year It Became Clear That Actually Women's Rights CAN Go Backwards or The Year We All Really Realized We Were Not Overreacting, Everything Truly Is...
Once upon a time, a long long (longlonglongLONG) time ago, I started a blog shortly after my firstborn turned six. At the time she had buckteeth and dark blonde hair and little blue glasses, and she often glared at me and said I DON'T LIKE YOU when I displeased her. This week that same sassypants turned TWENTY, only now her teeth look great and her hair is currently... um... strawberry blond with pink tips, I think... and she has a little opal nose stud instead of glasses (not to help her see... oh, you know what I mean) and nearly all of her texts to me start out I LOVE YOU but also I get I...
Hello! My father---you know, that guy you know as Mir's Dad---was here to see the play (which was, I think, pretty much a success despite some, er, challenges), and during that time he asked when I was going to blog again, and I was all, "Dude, I am BUSY, with this SHOW and STUFF" and he let it go. But then he called me last week and toward the end of the call he said, "Well, that's all. Just checking in. Also you do know you need to blog at least occasionally so I have something to read, right?" He wasn't much for guilt trips when I was growing up, but geez, he's making up for lost time...
Chickadee has been home---intermittently, to be sure, as her college pals are mostly elsewhere, and as often as not, that means I'm kissing the back of her head as she leaves for a day or three to be with them---and that means certain things are assured: 1) Her "debris field" (as Otto likes to call it) is a constant reminder that my child may grow and mature but will always be comfortable and, to some extent, toddler-esque in her childhood home, and 2) The time will come when she is lounging on the couch, looks up from her phone, sighs with disappointment, fixes me with a baleful stare, and...
When Chickadee decided on Tinytown College (not its real name), we made several trips to campus before she began her time there. Every time, we went to the bookstore and accumulated more Overpriced Licensed Stuff™, of course, including shirts for the whole family, which was ESPECIALLY important because we have since discovered that perhaps the REAL reason Chickie picked this school is because every occasion merits a free shirt. She has the shirts that we bought her and a shirt for every activity she's in and a shirt she got at freshman orientation and a shirt for her dorm and a shirt...
Otto and I spent most of the spring and part of the summer talking about, planning for, and perhaps-a-little-too-gleefully anticipating our empty nest. It's not that we don't adore the children---of course we do!---it's just that... one, we've never been "just us" the way a traditional first-marriage couple gets to be, and two, have you met my children? They're amazing, but I'm tired. We're tired. It's been a long nineteen something years since I first surrendered myself to motherhood. Raising kids on a completely normal/expected trajectory is hard, I assume. I mean, people tell me that it...
Don't try to have a conversation with me this week. I will, at some point, mutter darkly about throwing away five pounds of PERFECTLY GOOD shrimp. It will not need to be relevant to the conversation for me to bring this up, either. I am bitter and it's stupid that I'm bitter and yet: five pounds of shrimp. It's become the focal point of every feeling I've had the past few months. But let's back up. When I last left off, we were mostly all about Monkey's immediate needs and making sure he was okay. It was all... well, it was a lot. Me imitating Oprah and randomly pointing and shouting "YOU...
Chickadee has been giving me a hard time lately about the blog. "You never write," she complains. "Why don't you write anymore?" I look at her, and she looks at me, and I shrug. Sometimes I follow it up with the usual excuses---I don't want to violate anyone's privacy; my life is pretty boring; there's other stuff that's more important right now. Those things are true, but another truth lies between us, unspoken: It has been a hard summer, for all of us, but especially between her and me. And the kids are theoretical adults (or close to it; heavy emphasis on "theoretical," too) and whatever...
A very patient reader pointed out over on the Facebook page that I never updated after the last post (about Chickadee being in the hospital). I'm sorry! I wasn't trying to be a giant jerkface, but it just happens naturally, I guess. So, to clarify: 1) I suck. 2) Chickie was in the hospital for 5 days and then was released to us. 3) She is feeling a billion and twelve percent better than she did during the acute phase which landed her in the hospital. 4) She does, however, still have mono, which means... 5) ... she sleeps roughly 16 hours/day, and... 6) ... she had to resign from her summer...
