Introducing Gretel

Gretel brings so much joy into my life. She knows when my bedtime is, and she comes to have her ears scratched before I fall asleep. Regardless of how irritating my day has been, I fall asleep happy, listening to her purring. In the morning, my husband looks for her, and gives her "talks" about her obligation to end mouse lives. He brings her presents from the dollar store. Watching him fall in love with Gretel makes me think he will be a very good Dad to a baby.

I had to sign up for my health insurance benefits today, which also makes me think about babies. I want to have two more, but I didn't plan the first two, and so I have no experience in planned babies. It's all new! How much money do I need? When is the right time? Now? Later? Never? What should I do? How much does prenatal care cost? How long does it take? When will it happen? What if I don't like the thing, can I send it back? Apparently, there is a no return policy. My worst fear is giving birth to an asshole.

My best friend freaked out today when I talked about this with her. She has a strong opinion: NO MORE BABIES! NO! NO! NO! I think in her worldview only truly insane people have more than two. For me, I feel so enriched by my girls, and I feel like having a big family would be a dream come true. Even after every ounce of excrutiating hell I withstood in my divorce and ensuing custody nightmare, that never obscurred the joy that I get from my kids. To me, the experience was hell/mothering is AWESOME!

I want to experience what it all would be like with a loving, stable, rational partner, too. I missed that when my girls were small. I want to build a beautiful tribe, and have that be part of my legacy. My mom warns me that the age difference between the girls and whichever children we eventually have will be difficult. My mom had one in highschool, one in middle and one in elementary, and was very, very tired. My husband, forever the optimist, says who better to help the children navigate the situation than me, having lived it myself?

Sure, there is money and time and resources to worry about, and I'm taking the time to worry about them this time. I'm trying something new: Looking Before I Leap. Thinking Before Acting. Plannnnnnnnnnnnning.

“When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people.”-Chinese Proverb

Shrug. We'll see. Family planning gives us the illusion of control, but still there are an infinite number of uncontrollable variables. There, exactly, is the point where I contemplate the role of The Gods. We'll see.

A few art projects

Pocahontas

Hello from the parenting trenches. Whoo0-ya! I'm a parenting marine today! This hippy granola school that I so intelligently enrolled my children in is really busting my chops. I need an AUTHENTIC pocahontas costume by tuesday, I need a native american dish to serve four, I need a poster with 5 pocahontas facts, 3 pocahontas pictures, and a timeline with 7 events. The timeline must be memorized. I need one hundred paper plates and signed report cards to bring with me on tuesday for parent teacher conferences AND there was also a book report to do, due Monday.

It started at seven am with the "mommymommymommy, are you awake? Let me put the ass of the cat in your face!" There is nothing like waking up to the wrong end of a cat to put me in a great mood.

My husband was doing color commentary for a double header today, and took my beloved truck. No problem! Off we hiked to the drug store for posterboard. We cut and colored and copied. I can do posters in my sleep. We used genuine fall leaves, just for pizazz.

Then it came down to the costume. The real Pocahontas was naked. John Smith commented in it in his journal. All the boys were turning cartwheels, and she wheeled around with them, completely unaware of her heathen nakedness, to paraphrase. You can't go from the disney pocahontas, obviously. What does a 17th century Algonquin girl wear? That I have in my house?

Nothing. I can't find any useful resources online. Everything has seventeen years of beading and animal pelts involved. I get out the movie The New World, and the girl wears leather dental floss. I can't send my kid to school in that. I begin to get frustrated. I take down an old bedsheet, and start cutting and making fringe. Hours pass. Complete disaster. My elder daughter tells me she can't wear it. I say fine and sulk in the bathtub, grumbling fuckthisschoolandtheirgoddamnauthenticnative

americancostumedamandingvolvodriving

organicyogurteatingbunchoffuckingassholes, etc.

Now I'm out the material I was going to use, and the kids want dinner. I order chinese, and take down my husband's brown curtain in "The Man Room". Too bad. If you hadn't abandoned me and taken my truck, your window would still be dressed. I put in a completely child inappropriate movie that I like, tell the kids not to listen to the dirty jokes, and get out a needle and thread. I try to psych myself up. I can do this. I sew all the time. I got a B in home ec in eighth grade. I make dresses ALL THE TIME, if by all the time you mean never.

So, sew sew sew, eat a steamed dumpling, sew sew, check the book report, sew. Here is the finished product. It ain't no great shakes, but let me assure you, it is well, WELL beyond my capability. My daughter totally loves me, and tells me that she will remember this when she becomes a teenager and is tempted to hate me. She better.

I give you....Pocahontas.

Getting There

Last night my husband and I went on a date. I had woken up in the morning crying. I dreamed about my friend who had passed away last spring, and every time I think of her, I think of her young family, just like mine. I think about the fact that my time on earth is limited, and I am not yet what I want to be.

All day I was in a bad mood. I have a gong that goes off inside me, chiming "Get there. Get there. Get there." I don't know where there is. I only know it isn't here. It is tormenting.

So, on my date with my man (he is SUCH a good man!) we talked about the time when we first met. Only days after we met, I found myself in the emergency room with a 103. 7 fever. I had just returned from a trip to the Adirondacks. I had just met my future husband, and had pulled an all-nighter (or two?) just to spend time with him, and then I fell sick. I thought I had been biten by a poisonous spider while I was camping because I had a welt the size of a lacrosse ball on my rear end.

When I got to the hospital, they whisked me inside, and all of a sudden, just like on tv, there were six people on me, poking me and proding me, and giving me ivs. They diagnosed me with MRSA, and coursing with antibiotics, they sent me home at about 3am.

I got in my car and drove to Wegmans, the giant 24 hour grocery store. They have a cafe inside, and there I sat, hospital bracelet on my wrist, eating eggplant parmasean in the wee small hours of the night. I chuckled to myself over the absurdity of it all.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU CALL ME!?"interjected my husband. "I would have been awake!"

"I only just met you! I didn't want you to see me. I had a contagious, life threatening disease." So, I waited until the next day.

What I remembered then, falling on my head like a bucket of rocks, was that I had no one. My ex was still in full-on attack mode. He had the kids half of the time. My family was all the way up in northern New York. I had no one to call.

Now, only three years later, my house is full. I have full custody of my children. I am married. I have lovely in-laws five blocks away. I have my aunt and uncle on the farm only 45 minutes away. I would never have to drive myself home.

So, maybe I am "getting there". Even though the pushing mantra plagues me, I have crawled up and out of the pit without even taking the time to look backward. I have built something. I have grown. I have evolved. I am not going to take a break and rest on my laurels, though. I've got a lot to do.

Vent

Dear Old People,

Old people irritate me. I know, I'm going to hell, but I want to address some specific issues with you "Goldie Oldies" directly.

Say that you are 135 years old, and you know that you are deaf. I know you know that you are deaf! Don't act like you don't know! You get the indication that you might be deaf when you have to say,"WHAT!?" every time someone speaks to you. Not sometimes. Every time. If this is your situation, Do Not Call Me On The Phone. It's ok to be deaf. I embrace your different-ness. It is time to step out of denial. You don't even have to go so far as to get Miracle Ear. WRITE ME A LETTER. Do not ever call me on the phone again if you cannot hear a truck load of elephants smashing into a glass factory.

Speaking of correspondence, don't act horrified if I ask if you have an email address. I have to ask. It's my job. I find it pretty funny too. I know you don't have email, but please don't act like you don't know what email is. Don't explain to me the reasons that you don't have email. Don't tell me who in you family has email, even though you don't. Don't tell me that you have never have had and never will have email, and that you feel that you are discriminated against because coupons are available on the internet. Your argument doesn't hold water. Sorry that you are old.

As a concession, I give you permission to continue making fun of my name. It cracks me up every time some person born around the time of Christ says,"What? WHAT!? Are you kidding me? That's your name? REALLY?! Your mother NAMED you THAT?" I laugh especially hard when you say,"What ethnicity ARE you?" and then, "Well, ok..." like you've just given me permission to have my name. Go to town. I won't name my kid Lois, so we are even.

Thanks,
The Management

My Husband's Stitches

There is a before stitches picture that is even worse, but I will leave that to your imagination.

Laryngitis can be fun

Today I had no voice.

Last night I woke up at two am. My throat hurt, and I was coughing and snotting long ropes of green phlegm at an alarming rate, as I have been for the past week. I thought I should probably get into a hot bath and steam myself clean, and just like they say on those medical tv shows, "try to open an airway." I got into the tub, and it was there that I discovered that my voice was missing. I tried singing a "DoReMiFaSoLaTiDo", like you usually do when you are taking a bath in the middle of the night because you are covered in snot and suddenly discover that you have laryngitis. The strange squeaky honks that came out where my lovely singing voice should be startled the cat. The scared cat struck me as humorous, so I started laughing. It didn't come out nicely, what with the laryngitis and all, more gaspy and squeaky and odd, but I enjoyed a good cackle from the bathtub at two am last night. I don't know why people think I'm insane.

I can't fall asleep again until, you guessed it, just before it's time to get up. I still have no voice, I'm still coughing and snotting all over the place, and yet I decide it's a really great idea to go to work. My reasoning be that if you go to work, they give you money.

I must have looked really horrible because people just said to me,"Are you sick? Stay away from me!" and put file folders over their faces. Seriously. Grown adults. More than once. My missing voice evoked a lot of pity, too, and they gave me a data processing job that I could slink away into a corner and work on in silence. This made me pretty happy, so even though I wasn't much for jokes, I worked like a busy bee all the way to the end of the day without catastrophe. A nice lady even gave me herbal tea.

I really am fine. Its just a cold with some really cool special effects. It's payday tomorrow. My truck has new brakes. I have a giant bunny. My friend's biopsy is cancer-free. I'm feeling positive. Just quiet.