It turns out there's nothing quite like living the one-day-at-a-time-at-the-hospital life to make you REALLY excited about middle school graduation. Part of me still can't believe this almost didn't happen, and the other part is afraid to breathe, just in case I'm asleep. Today is a good day.
Otto never tires of telling people the joke about how it was an easy decision for us to have a small, family-only wedding ceremony without all of the traditional hoopla. "We've both already been to the wedding where she wore the big white dress," he'll deadpan, then sit back and wait for that to sink in. In a few more months, Otto and will have known each other for 23 years. Today, we've been married for 5 of them. [Aside: OH MY GOD look how tiny the children were!!] Just 5 years; our marriage is only embarking on kindergarten, and in some ways I'm still holding its hand to cross the street,...
Our long national nightmare known as the prolonged agony of Science Fair has come to a close for the year. Not that I'm not a fan of Science Fair. I think it's great. I just think it's LONG. From the time the kids start their projects in... I think it's October?... until the final fair at the end of March is just... a lot of time for a type-A nerdling to worry about her project. Not that I'm naming any names. Not that there was a child threatening to head to the exhibit hall WITH HER PUKE BUCKET if she was still sick, or anything. AHEM. So you may remember that the Regional Fair was a real...
The last few days have kind of beaten me down, which you wouldn't think would be possible, given that I keep (stupidly) thinking to myself, "Well, it's not like things can get any WORSE." HAHAHAHA. HA. Chickadee just scored herself a sports medicine doc and some regular physical therapy, possibly because someone realized there was a doctor we hadn't seen/needed yet. But I have to say I do like the concrete nature of this particular problem. ("You have iliotibial band syndrome and that is fixed via rest, ice, anti-inflammatories, and physical therapy." It's such a nice change from "We don't...
"Journaling is stupid," Chickadee said to me last night, out of nowhere, as we were driving to pick up pizza for dinner. I blinked at her. "Ummm," I said, helpfully. "Don't you have a diary you write in?" "Yes, but that's just it. It's dumb. People keep telling me it'll help to WRITE ABOUT MY FEELINGS and you know what? It doesn't. It's stupid. It just makes me dwell on the stuff I shouldn't and I never feel better, after." "I feel better when I write about stuff," I offered. Because it's true. "But... maybe you're just more of an action-item type. Maybe instead of writing about how you...
I've been to hours of rehearsals and have missed hours of rehearsals. I've driven to rehearsal and wiped tears off my cheeks the whole way there because it was my only time alone to vent the frustration and sadness I was feeling over my oldest being sick and scared and beyond the fixing I used to be able to do with band-aids and boo-boo kisses. I've laid awake at night while Otto gently snored next to me, my prayers for strength and patience and grace all tangled up with mental repetitions of my lines for the show---lines I could've easily learned in an afternoon back when I was in college,...
So remember how I was all "Grrrrr, people make me mad and we need more girl power in the world!" and so I was going to go audition for The Vagina Monologues basically because my daughter asked me to? And then I didn't say anything else about it and several of you emailed me and were all "Oh hey, whatever happened with that?" And I sort of did the email equivalent of "Hmmm, yeah, I dunno, OH LOOK, SOMETHING SHINY!" and didn't really tell you? I was waiting, see. The audition itself was quite brief---surprisingly so, I thought---and I was left wondering if I was so awful they cut me off to...
So my to-do list for today is about six miles long; I got up early (which I almost never do on Sunday, because sleeping late is easily in my top 5 favorite activities) and did some work and picked up the house a little and went out for groceries and was back before I'm usually even awake on the weekend. The plan was to have a couple of families from Monkey's new school come over to swim, so everyone could meet everyone else and the boys could play and---hopefully---Monkey would not refuse to get in the car when carpool time came. So I baked some muffins (when in doubt: bake) and made some...
"I want to study chemistry," he said. "Do you do that here?" "Sure," she said. "If you come here, you get to choose a lot of what you do. What do you like about chemistry?" "I don't really know, yet, I just think it would be neat." He was playing with Legos in the middle of the floor, happily chatting, a far cry from his refusal to look at the new parapro the day before. "Well, you can maybe choose that for some independent study, or when it's time to do a group project you can pitch that to the other students and see if other people want to do it, too." For the past half hour she had gamely...