Offspring: ecstasy and agony Articles

News you can use (for… umm… something?)

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...

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Hello yes hi we are alive

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...

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Hold on to your liver!

Honestly, I have a million things just from the last week... er... crap... week BEFORE last... that I am still going to tell you about. Pinky swear. I totally intended to get RIGHT back to you on all of that after I told you about the Toepocalypse. Because we had our familyversary! And it's been TEN YEARS, which is a really long time, and kind of a big deal, and also we all got each other very thoughtful gifts, some of which I will tell you about another time, but I will tell you that what I got Otto was that I very super-sneakily planned a little vacation for us. And by "us" I mean "just me...

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When it rains, it’s all kinds of drama

Look at me, not waiting a whole month to write again. It's almost like I'm going back to being a blogger, or something. WEIRD. The impetus for this is simple: Life was boring, boring, boring... right up until it wasn't. And when people start saying things to me like "Oh, Mir, that could only happen to YOU," I figure that means it's ridiculous enough to share, because why should I hog all the fun? I should not. Perhaps nothing dramatic is happening in your life, in which case: YAY YOU! But I have some drama to spare, and I'm a good sharer. ALSO, after 3 weeks of back and forth with our...

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That (other) time my kid got into college

Perhaps you remember when Chickadee figured out what she wanted out of a college and then made it happen, and I was over the moon because not just YAY COLLEGE but also YAY LOOK AT YOU ADULTING and YAY YOU MADE IT and such. It was a time of MANY FEELS, many capital letters, and me randomly getting weepy and saying I AM JUST SO PROUD OF YOU to her at the most inopportune and (one assumes) embarrassing times. I'm sure she loved it. All of that was very exciting. It remains exciting, actually. If you think I don't periodically get teary and LOOK AT YOU GO all over again with her, you don't know...

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Happy birthday; get out

Yesterday, my WIDDLE TINY BAYBEE BOY turned 17. This is impossible, of course, because in my mind's eye he is still 3 or 4, tops, running through the house with his blankie tied around his neck as a cape, so that he can exercise his full power as SuperBoy. I realize this is ridiculous, as he has been neither tiny nor SuperBoy for years. These days, he runs through the house screeching like the mighty eagle he purports to be (I cannot explain this), and his wingspan is mighty and I do not remember eagles having scruffy goatees, but YOU ARE DEFINITELY GROUNDED. He submitted his senior quote...

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We are all my little dog and her coat

It's a very good thing I never actually promise to come back to writing here regularly. I think about it---a lot---but in the end, it doesn't seem to happen. Oh well. Hey! This blog is worth EXACTLY what you paid for it! (So there.) Things are rolling along, here, and everything is both going WHOOSH TOO FAST and also OMGGGGGGG SO SLOW. You know how Hermione has a time turner in the Harry Potter books so she can be in multiple places at once? Imagine I had one of those time turners and then I somehow ran it over with my car and tried to use it, anyway. Everything is taking too long but is...

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Picture perfect

I think I may have mentioned here once or twice or seven billion times that I hate having my picture taken. I am not a photogenic human. (This is not the same, by the way, as saying I'm an unattractive human. This is not a self-esteem issue, merely a "the way my particular features tend to be caught in pictures is not flattering in spite of the fact that I'm an okay-looking person in real life" issue.) My ex-husband is a very photogenic person, and so you can imagine my delight at discovering that nearly every candid photo of our offspring is amazing. Those cheekbones! Those lips! LOOK AT MY...

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Just be there, even if they sleep through it

This past weekend was Chickadee's Fall Break from school, so she came home on Friday afternoon and is headed back today. Four entire days to love on my girl! Four entire days of quality time and family togetherness! Sort of. She got home around 4:30 on Friday and went to bed. She got up around 9:00 and had some dinner and watched TV with me for a little bit, then went back to bed. She slept until 2:00 pm (!!) on Saturday, then headed in to work a shift at 4:00, but then came right back home because they'd double-scheduled, and... went back to sleep. Sunday she slept until 1:00 pm, had some...

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