I have become the Queen of Inappropriate Laughter. This isn't entirely new; I have always had a bent towards the unintentional snicker at less-than-optimal times. But now---mired in grief and worry---I go entire days in complete numbness, it feels like, only to have the odd comment strike my funny bone. I laugh until I cry. And that's a nice change of pace from just crying. Otto and his brothers text each other all the time. The other day, Nearly Nickless sent Otto a text that had him guffawing. I asked to see it, and at first I wasn't sure what was so funny. It was a picture of Nickless...
I have many, many things to tell you about yesterday. The whole family has been getting in on the action, too---suggesting post titles, pointing out this thing or that which I simply must remember to include in the details---but it will have to wait one more day. I'm sorry to be a tease; circumstances beyond my control, and all that. Tomorrow! All the gory details! Today, however, I have to go tend to some other things... like buying some Vaseline to stick in my nose. (Thanks for that suggestion. How had that not occurred to me before?) While I'm gone, you can go check out my post over at...
It's Tuesday, so I'm going to redirect you to Off Our Chests, this time to confirm what you already knew---I'm a jerk. I'm mean! All of the other parents are cooler than I am! [Aside: Chickadee has one friend who thinks I'm awesome. I have no idea where she got this idea, but I'm not about to disabuse her of it. Every time I give her a ride somewhere or she comes over or I see her at a school function or whatever, she laughs at my lame jokes and tells Chickie I'm the coolest mom ever. I've started calling her My Favorite Daughter and I'm SURE that's helping the already-strained relations...
Easter was a relatively low-key event 'round here. Thanks to my last-minute grocery store run, we had enough food to feed a small army. This isn't my fault; given our plans to just have a quiet dinner of the four of us, and given that one of us doesn't eat meat, my intention was to buy a few ham steaks and we'd just cook them out on the grill. But it turns out that the day before Easter, giant hunks of pig are actually cheaper than smaller, more manageable hunks of pig. Naturally, I opted for a small ham because it was more food for less money (and that's my particular mental illness, that I...
Today we are carefully preparing for this holiest of weekends in the standard way: You know, getting up early, cajoling the children into doing yard work with us while they complain bitterly ("I hit my leg on the wheelbarrow!" "These sticks are hurting my hands!"), then realizing that tomorrow is Easter and we have no food and I have to go grocery shopping. The usual. Anyway, as I wandered through the supermarket, comparing prices on various hunks of delicious pig meats (Jesus probably kept kosher, which makes the Easter fixation on giant hams rather odd), I felt almost peaceful. We got a...
I've reached the segment of our program where I'm finding it difficult say much, to anyone. Never mind writing about my delicate feeeeelings, Otto's customary "How was your day?" query as we're getting settled in bed at night is enough to render me speechless. How was my day? Ummm, Chickadee remains medically fragile and I think Monkey has another sinus infection (which you understand to mean "He says he feels fine, but he's being a complete butthead at school and has a nasty cough, so that probably means he's sick"), so my days mostly feel like a mad dash from here to there, cradling a...
In the continuing saga of My Oh My What Exactly IS Wrong With This Chickadee Kid, Anyway... a while back one of her doctors sent us to another doctor who sent us to a third doctor. And she told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and... oh, wait. That's a shampoo commercial, not what happened to us with the doctor. My mistake. (But your hair really DOES smell terrific.) Anyway, we met with this new doctor---we'll call him Dr. Zebra, for reasons which will make no sense to anyone but me and Chickie, who leaned over to me the moment we left his office that first time...
This week is Operation Rejoin The Human Race. Oh, I know, you weren't aware that I left. But I did! Every now and then my natural tendencies towards hermit-tude intersect with massive life suckage and then I go underground (metaphorically---the clay in Georgia is far too hard for actual tunneling) and the extent of what I say in public is limited to things like, "The sunlight! IT BURNS!" At a certain point, my darling husband starts looking at me with a gaze tinged with equal parts pity and fear, and then I know it's time to pull myself up by my bootstraps. Or shave my legs again. Whatever....
I used to pray for patience, you know, because I figured that was what I needed. But it turns out that if you pray for patience you get a whole lot of "character building" experiences wherein your patience is "tested" and you want to say "lots of blasphemous and profane things" to whoever's in charge. Go figure. (I swear to you I just typed "Fo gigure," and almost left it like that, but after admitting to such poor behavior, I reasoned it was best not to further tempt fate just now.) But hey, sometimes I learn things! Slowly, sure---always pretty slowly---but I am capable of learning and...
