I recently received a kind but somewhat plaintive "If you're never going to write again could you at least TELL us" message and then I felt guilty because guilt is my go-to emotion. (My second go-to emotion is anger, which is a real treat for those around me, lemme tell you.) I never INTEND to stop writing. I just... don't... for a while... and then inertia kicks in, and before I know it, months have passed. I do miss the days when my children were small and cherubic and uncomplicated and everything out of their mouths was entertaining and I had endless blog material simply from the...
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...
I am positively CRUSHING 2018, in case you were wondering. Why, I made a new vision board on January 1st---as I've done for the past howevermany years---and I finally took down last year's board and hung the new one this week. In April. LOOK AT ME GO. (Okay, in my defense: It has to be sealed with some spray stuff and I couldn't find my old can of it, or maybe I'd used up the old can, I don't know, and then I didn't buy any until my 57 trips to the Big Home Improvement Store during Dressergate, and then I had to find the Command Strips, and... yeah, okay. That's not really a defense.) The...
Monkey turned 18 last week. EIGHTEEN! That's just plain nutso, because I can barely remember my own name these days, but I have such clear memories of the day he was born, so it cannot possibly have happened so long ago. I remember the doctor insisting it would "be a while" because my labor with Chickadee was so long, and he checked on me and left the hospital, saying he'd be back around lunchtime. Less than an hour later I told the nurse I was pretty sure I needed to push, and she checked me and laid a gentle hand on my knee. "DO NOT PUSH," she ordered me. She picked up the phone. "We're...
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...
Hello! Greetings from the land of Never What You Planned, But Somehow It More Or Less Works Out Eventually. I feel like I've spent the last 19 years exhorting my kids to be flexible! Go with the flow! But don't be afraid to change course! There are no wrong choices, only "right for right now" choices, and if/when they stop being the right choices, you'll make another choice! It's all part of the journey to where you're supposed to be! A lifetime of trying to convince them that life throws us curveballs and that's okay, and they can handle it, and yet... they struggle with this. I do, too....
