When you have kids and you remarry, you hope that eventually your children and your new spouse will someday share the kind of loving bond you already have with your kids. You know that it will take time and hard work, but still, you hope. Maybe you don't specifically hope that after 8+ years your oldest will leave this: ... and then your spouse will behold that note, flip it over, and do this: ... but when it happens, you'll still feel a sense of warm fuzziness in-between giggles.
It has come to my attention that my perception of "normal" may be... a little off. Weird, right? I---and my family/home---am the picture of boring normalness, surely. (Voices in my head: Yeah, no. Also, don't call me Shirley.) I mean, doesn't everyone reassure others about their competence by announcing that they're a dog door? No? Or own their stupidity by exclaiming "Gorgonzola!"? Also no? Weird. For some reason, this morning, I started thinking about all of the weird little things which happen around here and strike me as perfectly normal even though it's POSSIBLE that they're not. Or...
I often refer to our housekeeping style as "tidy with hidden pockets of disaster." We spend most of our family time in the kitchen and family room; those rooms are clean and orderly, for the most part. My office desk tends to suffer from pile-itis, but I'm working on that. I exhort the children to keep their spaces free of clutter, or at least not covered in dirty laundry, which in teenage parlance is the same thing. But I must confess that somewhere along the way, part of how we kept the main areas of the house looking reasonable was to dump anything "to be dealt with later" into our master...
I view myself as a strong, independent woman. I was fine being single. I don't NEED Otto, you understand. I just WANT him. I like having him around, because he's cute and funny and my rotten children often do not laugh at my lame jokes. But I could totally manage without him if I had to, despite his frequent assertions that I married him simply either for his health insurance or because I needed a lawn boy. Once the freezer was cleaned out the other night, many items had been thrown away. Various mystery or in-need-of-disposal items, however, were in glass containers, and so we chucked them...
Exactly eight years ago, right about now I was getting my hair done in preparation for taking another crack at the whole 'til-death-do-us-part thing. That feels simultaneously about a million years ago AND just a few weeks ago. Time is weird like that. As is his style, Otto swooped into the kitchen this morning with a small flourish and a big, "Happy Familyversary!" and an extremely thoughtful gift for me and a family gift for all of us. He is the BEST. (Did you know that the 8th anniversary is pottery? I got a beautiful piece and we're all going to a wheel class at a local studio next week...
It's been... kind of a hard month. February, man. February just blows chunks, under the best of circumstances. I don't know why, but we should probably just accept that as fact. The days are short, the weather is wonky, etc. (Mind you, I do not miss the endless days of snow we had in February up north, but even here in Georgia, the weather is confused and unpredictable. TIME FOR A SNOW DAY = no snow at all. SUPER WARM DAY is then followed by CARNIVAL OF ICE, and so on.) The other day, Otto and I were headed out to An Unpleasant Event (first rule of Vague Club: We capitalize things to pretend...
The other day a dear friend said something along the lines of "Maybe I'm not a horrible person and maybe the world isn't awful. Maybe it's just February." (I am paraphrasing a little, I think.) This struck a chord with me, because everything does seem particularly awful right now, but doesn't it EVERY February? And aren't I just as surprised, every single time, to discover that JUST POSSIBLY it's a Calendar Thing rather than a Life Sucks Thing? I am a slow learner, is my point. Calendar or not, this "short" month is feeling particularly long, not the least of which because it always seems to...
Otto picked up a handful of lottery tickets last week. The Powerball or whatever it's called was up to... I don't even know what. 250 frajillion? It was a lot of money. And while I firmly believe lottery tickets to be a tax on people who are bad at math, we could spare a few bucks for the fun of what-if-ing for a few days. Spoiler: We didn't win. My dreams of lounging on a divan all day---eating bon bons and directing underlings to peel grapes for me---have been dashed. (Related: We don't own a divan.) Lately it feels like Otto and I talk about money a LOT. Part of this is the looming...
I went to Mom 2.0 this past weekend, and it was a verrrry interesting trip for me. In 10 years (!!) of blogging and freelancing and working for various clients, this is the first time I've gone to a conference as a representative of my employer rather than as just a freelancer looking for work, and that was very different. I'm still adjusting to this new phase of my career and still kind of looking around and going, "Is this my life? Are you SURE?" It's all awesome, but I don't know if you've maybe noticed that I'm not always so good with change...? Shocking, I know. It's a secret. Don't...
