"You Had a Bad Day..."

Have you ever had a day where you feel as if you've escaped the guillotine with a few split hairs?? Friday was that day for me.

I've started a new job and I'm still getting used to getting somewhere on time. Rushing in the morning I grab my breakfast to go...homemade breakfast burrito with a dollop of sour cream, cut up on a plate, a fork stuck in the middle. First mistake.

The kids are scrambling over each other and yipping like a boxful of puppies trying to get into the van. Where's Laura's other shoe? I stumble out of the car again and head back into the house to locate the missing shoe. The clock is counting down and I feel each passing minute like a hammer blow. Going to be late!! Panic-driven I grab ANY shoes and head out to the car.

"Not those shoes, mommy!" Of course. Her eyes well up and I try to change the subject by asking what she's going to do at gramma's today. Meantime, the boys are finally buckled in, and I'm careening around corners and rolling through stop signs to get to gramma's house in record time. My tires are barely stopped before I'm unbuckling kids and sending them out the sliding door and up the driveway. Once the last one hits her front door I'm backing out and pushing the 25 mph speed limit out of there.

Gritting my teeth at the geriatric drivers in front of me who are afraid they might hit something...(like the speed limit?)...I finally make it out to the 'main' road. Where I promptly drop a forkful of hot, sour cream-covered burrito down the front of my BLACK dress pants and top. De-LIGHT-ful.

Up ahead a train is across the tracks. FAN-TAS-tic. As I reach into my purse for baby wipes, and scrub furiously at my clothes, I slow to stop for the train...directly into the bumper of the car ahead of me. Nice.

Still swiping ineffectually at the hopeless smear on my outfit I apologize profusely as the elderly gentleman hobbles around to the back of his car to view the damage. Fortunately, there isn't any damage distinguishable from the other dents on his bumper. He grins and says "It's an old car anyway, and it looks fine to me...seems you're havin' a bad 'nuf day anyway!!" Great. Thanking him sincerely I rush back to my van and put it in drive before the door's even closed...the train's off the tracks and I'm trying not to be late!

Two strikes.

I drive the speed limit, white-knuckled...sure that if I speed, my third stroke of bad luck will be a policeman, and that is one I cannot afford.

"Thump"...

Hit a squirrel. Strike Three.

Made it to work with two minutes to spare. Triple counted my money all day. Should have bought a lottery ticket with all that bad luck out of the way!!


PS...

Funny thing was, I stopped at Publix for milk on the way home. Guess who was bagging my groceries?? The kindly old gentleman I rear-ended in the morning. He recognized me, and I sheepishly asked him if his day had been better since the morning. Sigh. No more eating breakfast in the car. No more leaving at the last minute. Poor squirrel....

Dang, I'm Good!

Holy Crap I am a good writer!! How come nobody has noticed this yet? I just sat re-reading various blogs, chuckling out loud as if I’d never read them before…let alone written them, and I wonder…”Why am I not getting paid for this?” Thus begins my quest to find someone who can take my random musings and display them for money. Well…that cheapened it somehow. It sounds so tawdry when put that way…sacrificing art for cold cash. Uh, yes please. There must be some way to justify staying home with my children for the next, oh, thirty years…and writing seems so…well, easy.

And yet…here I sit…tapping on my keyboard at 2am, (which I shall surely pay for when my children arise at the crack of dawn), to no one in particular…words of wit and wisdom (or not) that no one will likely read. Well, I shouldn’t say NO one, as I believe the members of my family do check in occasionally!

Still…for what purpose do I write? Some part of it is surely the sheer joy of splattering a page with sarcastic and warped humor, and then there’s actually posting it for the ‘world’ at large, to read. I’ve given up the Cinderella hopes for ‘happily ever after’ with Prince Charming, settling instead for ‘happy most of the time as long as I don’t expect much’ with Prince self-absorbed. Um, I mean Prince mostly-charming. Why is it I’m still waiting for my fairy God-editor to appear, and with a sprinkling of eraser crumbs, propel me to the employed columnists’ ball?

Somehow that completely unrealistic fairy-tale still lives on in my naïve heart.

Ok, maybe I’m just kidding myself. Perhaps I, and my beloved family members, are deluding ourselves in seeing marketable talent in my ramblings. Maybe I don’t have the necessary skills to hone this craft to the point of sale. Besides which, I haven’t a clue where to begin.

So…once again…I sit and tap furiously on the keyboard, the sound echoing in the room like a hamster working the metal bearing in its water bottle. I will then stretch my pinkie to the far corner and hit ‘enter’, hurling another few bytes of ME into the webiverse…hoping to make contact with my fairy God-editor…or maybe just the Magical Agent with the keys to the kingdom.
Will I ever go to the ball? Better yet, will I ever get paid to write a skewed, narrow and sarcastic view of the ball??

Who ARE You People?!

Who ARE you people...who wake up just before the sun rises on a SATURDAY morning in anticipation of a frenzied forage through other people's dusty junk? I know you take 'THE HUNT' as serious as a heart-attack. I've seen you...cruising neighborhood streets just as the sun rises...newspaper clutched, white-knuckled, 'tag sale' ads circled in red, peeking between your fingers like rheumy-eyed messages from the underworld. Some of you are true professionals, printing out detailed maps with circled locations, precise routes and prospective 'gold mines' listed with strict attention to detail.

You slow for the traditional 'drive by', the experienced yard saler's quick, sharp assessment of a driveway littered with discards and detritus. There are shaky legged tables piled with suspicious clothing, dated appliances and grubby toys. Old speakers bookend the cracked and pitted driveway like silent monoliths of a bygone era. Spread out on the weedy lawn is a pilled and faded blanket displaying a ragged collection of straw handbags, canvas totes, and 'vintage' shoes of dubious origin. Cardboard boxes look ready to collapse with their loads of scratched CD's, empty CD cases, old VHS movies and battered books. There's a dented pink hula hoop, a dog kennel with a broken door, a jumbo-sized tennis ball, bobble-heads and kewpie dolls of every description, and a "Dazey Donut Factory"...still in the yellowed box. Now that your interest is suitably piqued...you do a 12-point U-turn in the middle of the residential street and bring your boat of a car to rest with two wheels on the neighboring lawn, making sure your escape route is free for a mad dash to the next sale.

You cross the street casually, your barely-concealed eagerness cracking the veneer of the indifference you wear like an ill-fitting suit. The moment you cross the foot of the driveway you are multi-tasking madly, eyes flicking and flying, hovering and barely alighting on the melee like flies on a cow. You acknowledge the sellers' cheerful 'Hi'! with a brief nod, or ignore the hungry eyes that follow you like circling vultures. You scan the red-dots and hastily-written price stickers with an outer calm that belies your inner thirst to find some item of value that the owner has under priced and overlooked. Juggling change absentmindedly, you peruse end tables, veneer lifting in the corner, covered in chipped and mismatched dishes and old Tupperware...hoping to spot a teacup marked ''Limoges" on the bottom. Or perhaps you are truly fascinated by collections of old costume jewellery. Earrings with missing stones blink one-eyed at you in the sun, glittering for your attention. If you are savvy, the signed Eisenberg brooch you purchased for a dime and Ebay valued at $350, propels you through the aggregate of chunky plastic pearls.

Once you've found an item worthy of the crumpled bills clutched in your sweaty fist, you warily approach the seller with a look of slight distaste on your face, turning the item over and pointing out obvious flaws, you begin the 'art of yard-sale bartering'. You offer a dime for an item marked a quarter. You offer $5 for an item marked $10 and act as if you are doing them a favor by taking the item off their hands. If they hold out firm, or better yet, adamantly defend their price by quoting the history, original cost, or value of the item, you place it down immediately and hover, expectantly, hoping they will bend in the face of your resolve. Sometimes, if you have nerves of steel, you may actually walk away from the desired item...but come back to the sale later in the day hoping to find the owner's heart appropriately softened after facing the prospects of packing said item up and storing it in their garage again.

Or perhaps you are the breed of yard sale enthusiasts that 'do this for a living'. You scan and reject almost instantaneously, looking only for items priced sufficiently low with enough resale value to allow you to list them on Ebay (with an inflated 'shipping and handling' charge,) or at a flea-market.

It all just confused me. Until last week, that is.

My mother-in-law dragged me out to help her at her table in the local community center tag sale. I sat there, my face burning in mortification as I tried to justify the prices on old lamps and kitchen utensils. I wondered how I could crawl under the table when my mother-in-law huffed in offense as someone offered her a mere $2 for her $5 cat figurine. At the first opportunity I bolted to 'scour' the others tables, being alternately embarrassed by what they were trying to sell, and the fact I appeared to be a buyer!

All that changed when I got to a table covered in vases. Tall, short, colored, clear, small, cute, elegant...and cheap. For about $12 I picked up eight vases that would have cost me over $100 retail!! Do you know how much I could save when making flower arrangements, if I only spend $2 on the container?

I'm hooked!

(But I'm still not getting up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday, or printing out routes...so don't try to make me!)

Weary Mother Pleads Insanity

I sit here, contemplating the universe…and the particularly quirky idea of having three children so close together.

I am fortunate that Bobby is in school full-time now, but the other two little ‘darlings’ have more than made up for whatever peace that may have afforded me.

In fact, this week has me seriously considering locking myself in the bathroom and refusing to come out again. Ever. Unfortunately, I know what would happen in my absence…more of the things that happen in my presence. For instance, in just the last two weeks Ben (3), and Laura (2), acting as “Team Terminator” or the “Terrible Twosome” (hereafter referred to as T2), have destroyed more than just my sanity.

Yes, the sweet-faced duo disguise themselves as innocent toddlers…but beneath their baby-powder-scented façade…beat hearts as cunning as Bonnie and Clyde. What mischief can they find? In what moment of mother’s distraction can they wreak the most havoc? Their eyes glitter from darkened corners…waiting to dart out and sharpen their ruinous skills as soon as the phone rings.

They often precede their mischief with sweet hugs and kisses, and with Oscar-worthy performances of peaceful play, they lull me into a false sense of security.

I have been caught off guard so many times this week I am considering placing “WANTED” posters up in the neighborhood. “WANTED: HOME FOR TWO TODDLERS. FREE TO GOOD FAMILY.”

First there was the great “Diaper Bag Caper” of last week. T2 earned a TIMEOUT in their room (which I now realize was preplanned with the forethought of a bank heist), and I sank gratefully into the chair at the computer to check my email. I heard them chattering away in their room, flipping through books at their bookshelf, and I heaved a sigh of relief for five minutes of peace.

I paid dearly for those five minutes.

After slowly becoming aware that their ‘quiet’ time had turned into peals and shrieks of laughter I felt (belatedly) that I should check on them. Imagine my horror to see their room (and each other) covered in baby powder…the television coated with a greasy finger-painted mess of baby oil, their hair slicked back like Max Headroom, and blobs of pink baby lotion dotting the rug like sweet-smelling posies. Streaks of white-clown grease-paint diaper cream were scattered about the room with gleeful abandon. An entire bottle of hand-sanitizer had graciously been emptied around the carpet as well, to aid with disinfecting, I am sure. There was T2, big-eyed, trying not to grin, while stammering out little apologies and blinking their lashes at me.

I’d like to say I handled it with grace, but I didn’t. I sat on the floor and cried.

That must have been entertaining, or at least encouraging, as this week they’ve followed that up with some truly charming events, such as the “Toothpaste Mirror Smear”, the “Spilled Milk Dance-Dance Revolution”, the “Jar of Honey-coated stuffed animals”, "Picasso Painting with yogurt and smashed bananas", and my personal favorite…”Laura’s Lovely Lid: A Study in Toddler Barbering.”

Only slightly more disturbing than her self-trained haircut…is the fact that she got to the scissors in the first place.

(Note to self: Buy more hats.)

Why do they always hack off the bangs right next to the scalp in the middle of their forehead?! How do they know, instinctively, where they can do the most damage in the shortest amount of time? On top of the horror I feel for her performance as “Edward Scissorhands”, is the guilt I feel over being embarrassed by her ‘Sigourney Weaver post-alien pate’.

Sigh.

This is the little sweet-faced two-year old who refuses, vociferously, to use the potty. She can climb into the computer chair, turn on the monitor, log onto the Internet, choose the correct game-site, click through the links to her favorite “Dora the Explorer” games, play and win them…but she can’t use a toilet?! Who’s the smart one here?

So tonight, as my aching head sinks into my pillow, I will not drift into the oblivion I so desperately long for. I will be straining at the baby-monitor trying to overhear T2’s plans for mischief and mayhem on the ‘morrow. I will fall into a restless sleep only to be tormented by dreams of greasy, chocolaty, sticky messes. I will dream of strange ominous spells of silence in which I realize that T2 is ‘up to something’. I will start awake at the smallest sounds…sure that the children are sneaking out of the house to visit our neighbor, Walter, for lollipops...again.

My children sleep the sleep of the innocent, secure in the knowledge that they are only babies, and entitled to experiment and push the boundaries whenever possible. I will wake with blood-shot eyes and stumble from bed to face the chaos of T2’s machinations.

The score?

Mom: 0
T-2: 10

Bump?!

Oh sure...now that I've re-visited my blog site I can't seem to contain myself!! Nothing for months...then two in the same night?! Perhaps it is time to add to the collection a little more often.

Speaking of which...here are a few of my favorites...

Bugs B' Gone
And Bingo Was It's Name-o
The Puzzling Challenge...or the Challenged Puzzler
A Tight-Knit(ting) Community
A Day in the Life of a TWO-Year Old

...and finally...last, but not by any means least...

"BIG BUG BLOG". My very first attempt at 'writing' so to speak. I always enjoy reading over that experience now!! I've come a long way since worrying about a few Pinto-sized Palmetto bugs.

The above blogs are written far more for entertainment purposes than to profess the profound. Which, come to think of it, I don't ever really achieve. : )

For my thoughts on my writing...see
"On Writing"
and
"Confessions of a Closet Fame-seeker"

Ok. Enough. Who's going to read this anyway???!!

K.

Random Musings of an 'Exercise Procrastinator'

I should be walking. I mean sweating. Or, sweating and walking, actually. Instead...I'm gleefully, guiltily tap-tap-tapping away on my keyboard, fingers-a-flurry. I KNOW I SHOULD be out there battling the bulge...and my intentions are still to make it out there yet...but for now? Call me selfish, I am reveling in the peace of a houseful of exhausted and sleeping children. I'm not ready to relinquish that yet.

Life is ticking along marginally well. I have been drawn to some fascinating reading lately and have been enjoying them immensely. Anything that can get me out of my own head would be WONDERFUL!! No more thinking in circles...the 'CYCLE' I call it...or, more appropriately, the "PSY-CHLE", lol.

I am starting to realize that I am not the sum of my negative thoughts! What a concept.

Enough of that 'deep' stuff for now though.

Today I am thankful for playgrounds. I am thankful for fenced-in tidy plots of suitably-soft-turfed structures that allow my CRAZY pre-schoolers to run wild, shrieking with abandon until they are ready to drop. Can I get an 'amen'?!

Today I am thankful for my teenager. Those days are sometimes farther apart than they should be. She's a great kid, a great help, and at times, a great challenge. She makes me work hard on working out my own issues so I can help her with hers...or maybe...just stop passing them down to her!! I'm more intent on challenging myself because of her.

Today I am thankful for sisters. I am so blessed and fortunate to have three and one sister-by-marriage! I got great news of a surprise visit next week by my youngest sister!!! YAY!!! GIRL TIME!!!! ALL THE WAY FROM NORTHERN CANADA!!! "SISTERS" will be the theme for those two weeks. Me and Laura...and Kathryn and her little sister.

Today I am thankful for the God-given ability to blurt out my thoughts in writing. Sometimes I read back the things I've written and find a bubble of out-loud-laughter breaking the silence of the room. I hope it's not self-satisfied aggrandizement that feeds that...but a genuine feeling of joy and awe that I manage to get things down in a way that I find delightful!

I should end this quickly. The road is calling...the chirrup and tweet of the night-time insects are calling me..."let's go...let's go...get going..." and I am starting to feel the pull of the sweet-scented night air. Time to turn on the MP3, blast into the past and relive the 80's. Or just bask in the symphony of night.

I'm going for a walk! Later!

K.


PS- I've now been on a walk...and instead of grabbing my MP3 player...I grabbed my neighbor! She's at home with her kids too...one crazy toddler that does insane stuff...two in and out stepsons that get into all kinds of grief...a 'tween and two teen girls that push the limits of everything all the time. Needless to say...she's got stress. So it seemed perfectly natural that at 10 o'clock at night I'm banging on her door to go for a walk-in-the-dark! It was great. Fifty minutes, 14 bug-bites, a healthy dose of commiserating and laughter...and hopefully...a pound lighter...priceless.

Star-light...Star-bright...

Rob and I slipped away to our community's private beach last night at midnight. Dragging reclining lawn chairs, toting a few snacks and a sizable amount of bug-spray, we set up 'camp'.

Camping out to watch the Perseid meteor shower that is! We used to drag the children from their beds, back when Bobby was a baby and Kathryn a grumpy, tired kid who thought staring at the sky was 'boring'. She doesn't quite 'get it' yet, so is happy to stay home in bed when Rob and I sneak away for our twice yearly starlit dates.

I've always been awed by the vast night sky, velvet black with it's scattering of cold diamond stars. I remember as a teenager, climbing up on the garage roof on warm summer weekends after babysitting jobs. The neighborhoods were quiet, mom and dad weren't expecting me back at an exact time, and I was 'safe' there, close to home. I'd lay up there with the warm, scratchy shingles gripping my clothes lightly, like sandpaper, feeling the magnitude of the heavens as they pulsed above.

Each twinkling star winked at me as we conspired together, me dreaming dreams, and the stars sending their light across a galaxy. Every shooting star then was a gift, and the mystery of the milky way caught my imagination with it's millions of stars gathered onto a hazy ribbon.

I have fond memories too...of 'Star Hill' in Rome, NY...where our family would sometimes gather late at night to drink in the sight of an uninterrupted summer sky filled with more stars than you could imagine. There, atop the verdant dome of grass, breezes tickling our faces, we would send out our silent pleas to the heavens to send us a star-fireworks display! Shooting stars, falling stars, earth-grazers with their phosphorescent tails lingering behind and fading to view after long moments left us hungry for more.

Last night was no exception, and the earth's rotation pulling us through the Perseid debris provided us with some exceptional flashes and bursts.As we talked and reminisced on years' expeditions past, we would gasp or exclaim, pointing out each sighting to each other with awe and delight. There was easily, to our count, a falling star or two each minute, with a good half-dozen 'earth grazers' that flamed across the sky with impossible brightness, trails lingering and fading behind them, making the trip worthwhile.

The surf was gentle, the sand free of critters, (though not sand-fleas, mosquitoes and black flies, dangit!), and if there had been a nice breeze we could have stayed out longer. As it was, dressing in jeans to ward off the swarms of biting insects left us warmer than was comfortable. That surf breaking lightly on the beach looked SO inviting! If we had brought towels, I'd have gone in the water in a heart beat...night-scene from JAWS playing in my mind, notwithstanding!!!

We did walk along the beach, playing tag with the surge of foaming water a little, and we found, to our delight, that our dragging steps in the damp sand stirred up the flash and glitter of microscopic bio luminescent phytoplankton washed up on the shore. "These tiny plants give off a faint bluish-green light and silver spark when stepped on or in stirring the sand around. Apparently, the occurrence of dinoflagellate blooms coincides with certain weather and oceanic conditions, and can appear one night, and then not appear again for months. The luminescence of a single dinoflagellate lasts for 0.1 seconds, and they don’t live in the sand more than a day"*, making our experience even more memorable.

Walking backwards, each dragging step stirred up enough glitter to satisfy Tinker Bell at Disney! Tiny twinkling lights at our feet echoed the vast array of twinkling glitter above. What a magnificent sight!

We had arrived about midnight, and at about 2:30am, the muggy, sticky, humid air and droves of insistent bugs sent us scrambling back to the relative cool and safety of the air-conditioned car. We spent another hour there...Rob snoring loudly in his reclined seat, while I propped up with pillows, backwards on my seat, head on the dash, staring up through the windshield at the familiar sky of my youth. With the air conditioning on, and no new prickling bites or buzz-by mosquitoes with their high-pitched whine in my ear...I connected again to that deep peace I feel when in view of a clear night sky draped with it's black crepe and shining silvered sequins.

With no moon in the sky to compete with, the stars twinkled and glowed with a brilliance seen only in the rare occasions we can get far enough away from civilization to enjoy true darkness. The heavens dazzled with ice white flashes, alternating with cold blues, twinkling reds, and the bright flashes and streaks of shooting stars.

It's a privilege to live in a world swathed and cradled in the beauty of the heavens.

*http://www.beachconnection.net/news/glow0806_0423.htm

Celebrity Breeds Immorality? Or Vice Versa?

I saw an article on MSN news today titled, “Britney (Spears): Has She Lost It?” Unfortunately, the only answer to this question is another question: Who cares? Or...more accurately, WHY do we care?

We live in a society that lauds celebrity despite or perhaps because of, moral depravity, shoddy or absentee parenting of children born to unwed parents of dubious or fleeting commitment, and personal gratification over law, morality, or common sense.

When I consider the famous (or infamous?) quad of teen-role models, and take a moment to reflect on the kind of society that applauds the vacuous, self-indulgent and irresponsible behaviors of Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears, I shudder to think of the generation we are raising under their powerful examples.

What a waste it is that these women of influence, gifted with lives of ease and wealth, armed with a mighty sense of entitlement, completely lack any interest that is not self-serving. I know the fast, early rise to wealth, fame and power is not without its share of dangers, but why does society hold them up worthy of continued celebrity? Are we so unconcerned and out of touch with the toll it takes on core values, to have our youth aspiring to this?

Perhaps that is the trouble then. The breakdown of the family has spawned a generation of single-parents too tired, too disinterested, or too focused on their own needs, to do the work necessary to teach, police, implore, restrain, and educate their children.

The 40-somethings are competing to be the next 20-somethings, and the children raised in such homes are left to the wiles of the media in their formative early teenage years.

The all too-pervasive, and persuasive forum of the media holds excess, immorality, immodesty, and instant gratification up as the new standard of interest. Whereas they may shake their heads solemnly while writing the articles, they send their photographers out in droves for a flash or glimpse of reckless or immoral behavior. They comment hungrily, feeding on the refuse left in the wake of these mega-stars’ passing.

There aren’t enough parents teaching their teens to look beyond what which current trend dictates. There are too many clamoring for standards of dress that set dangerous precedent to the moral ambiguity of our rising generations. Adults that should see the pitfalls snap up the latest trends and styles in a desperate attempt to hold on to, or compete with, fleeting youth.

The over-sexualized media portrayal of women convinces many that Britney, Lindsay, Paris and Nicole are worthy of adoration based entirely on their social status. It’s past time that this status holds up as the ideal. We need more valiant mothers, more strong, noble, intelligent women going about the quiet work of raising children and teaching them to be moral contributors to society.

If we continue to hold celebrity to such low standards…how can we show our children where to place appropriate value? Paris skips in stilettoed heels from one pink-Porsche party to another, laughing vapidly and mocking the mundane. How much would be accomplished if she were well-spoken, appropriate, and lent her considerable resources to a worthy cause?

So Lohan’s in rehab, and Britney’s falling apart, and even though they did it to themselves, we bought their complacency with our acceptance...and that's even worse.

Beach Babies

I bobbed about in the surf yesterday with my little flotilla of children in "floaties", and all was well in the world. The sun was hot on our faces, heads alternately warmed from the sun and cooled by the waves and breeze. The laughter of sand-covered, salt-sticky children echoed from the beach. Feet in the surf, the line of mothers on camp-chairs reached to the double-digits, and babies slept or fussed under umbrellas. Young men skimmed recklessly on wave boards across sands wet by receding waves, and young women bobbed like giggling message-filled bottles, moved to the shore by rolling of the sea.This was our day at the beach yesterday with a good showing of the mothers in our ward, future leaders in tow!

I definitely took too much stuff. Next time, it's me, the kids, the "floaties", one towel, hats and my chair. That's it! They were happy to run on the beach, exploring shells, flinging wet sand into the pounding surf, toss their shells with a 'plink' into the waves that washed up the beach, dig holes that quickly filled and melted back into an unbroken shore again, and ride the swells with mom. All that other stuff was just more to carry, more to clean, and more to fill with sand!

Even though I spent most of my time counting heads and worrying like a mother hen, it was a wonderful day. We filled the van with the requisite amount of sand, stopped for Slurpee's at 7-11, and watched the kids fall asleep damp and sticky in their car seats on the way home.

Once home, we unloaded mountains of wet, sandy towels, wet, sandy toys, wet, sandy children in wet-sandy shoes...into the house. Kids went straight to the tub to peel out of their sand-filled suits! A castle's worth of sand later, kids washed and dried, fed and settled down to watch a show, mom is hosing off beach toys, unloading the car, rinsing sandy shoes, and putting laundry through. I just want to take a nap!

The day was glorious, the sun and ocean the perfect temperatures, the company, heavenly. Looking forward to next week!

Procrastination...

I know I am doing it. I can feel it both weighing on me, and running around feverishly in the back of my mind. The list is long...the task, daunting at best. It's just that time of year again, and I dread it anew. The day is calling to me...and it's saying, "RUN AWAY!"

I am talking about the mountains of clothes I need to go through...again. Every six months I have to empty the children's dressers and closets and drag out the bins and bags of next-size, next-season, clothes to fold and put away for use.

I don't mind the task in theory...but in reality, with three toddlers running around...it's just not as easy as it needs to be. What I really need is a big block of uninterrupted time to be in there with the door closed, piles and piles of clothes around me to work and think. What I'll get though...is a few minutes here and there...fighting off kids jumping through the organized piles, and tossing the articles into the air like jumbo confetti. Or...worse yet...'helpers' that shuffle, tuck and squish clothes into and out of piles randomly, or undress and redress in a dozen different outfits they discard like banana peels all over the house.

In between going through the old clothes and folding the new...the kids will need diapers changed, Sippee cups filled, foods, snacks, entertainment, refereeing, hugs, kisses on boo-boo's, an occasional swat, time in mommy's lap, the password for the computer game, and someone to make sure they aren't playing with knives, electrical outlets, or worse...the soap-pump in the bathroom!

It's a big, thankless, job. It's necessary but knowing it's impractical to put it off with the school year about to begin, doesn't make it any easier to begin. Maybe if I stop feeding them...I won't have to do it again for awhile...

I am sitting here typing and with every click of the keyboard, I feel myself growing more firmly into Rob's shoes....p-r-o-c-r-a-s-t-i-n-a-t-i-o-n. Life gets too quickly out of hand with tasks like these not taken care of. Especially in a house the size of ours, filled with as many people as it is.

If I can't have help with the job itself, how about some appreciation for the Herculean efforts of one dedicated mom?? Hmmmm. I do wish my dear husband had a clue about the work involved, but I don't think the male mind has the necessary depth and faculty to imagine the effort involved in the mundane, but critical details of running a household full of children!

'Tis thankless work, but I will find joy in serving my family.Surely there are mothers out there, certainly my own, who can appreciate the immense task. Those piles of clothes are staring at me. Who's going to blink first??

Time to stop typing...and lift the burden of a big chore not done...to the satisfaction of the job well done. Wish me luck!

Bugs 'B Gone

There is no doubt in my mind that we truly need the services of a yearly exterminator. No, really. When I first moved to Florida I was terrified of all legged things larger than a mosquito. Time and frequency have taught me (more or less,) to calmly accept that I will occasionally run into an insect large enough that it should be paying property taxes…but it doesn’t mean I want them in my house.

So despite the fact that what would have sent me screaming in terror just a mere couple of years ago, I now regard with a jaundiced eye while I reach for the ever-popular cup and envelope, doesn’t mean this is the ideal situation for bug-removal. For those of you unfamiliar with this method, I’m shocked. Everyone has done this:

Spot bug. Grab whatever vessel at hand, preferably empty, though not necessarily so. In same motion, reach for closest sheet of paper (the stiffer the better…junk mail works well), that is large enough to cover the mouth of said container. Slam open top of jar/glass/mug over too-slow bug, and slide paper between wall/mirror/tub and bug while gritting your teeth, and making small whimpering sounds. Hold paper firmly over container’s opening, bravely shaking container slightly, if needed, to keep terrifying creature down. Fling, while removing paper. Fling the whole cup if need be, but at least fling the bug from the cup while removing the paper. Slam the door…or lid to the toilet immediately. The bug will be mad. Use accompanying surge of adrenaline to run (shrieking if necessary) away. Quickly.

As I was saying, despite this method being ‘tried and true’, it is simply not the most desirable. The desired method of extermination is definitely to pay someone to come to my house once a year, spray a little here and there, tuck a few inconsequential nuggets of poison in the outlets, and quietly take his leave.

Let me explain the timeline that follows this appointment.

One week after the exterminator’s visit, I notice that the sugar-ants that are enjoying Mardi Gras under the table have not yet got the message. They will.

Two weeks after the exterminator I will find a few dead, or mostly dead, large palmetto bugs in unexpected places. For the most part, though gross, they are easily dispatched thanks to their lethal dose of ingested poison. I vacuum if dead, or resort to slightly nauseating cup and paper method outlined above if creature has not yet succumbed to it’s final rest.

Three weeks later, there is a new sense of ease in the house. Less chirping and squeaking from the shrubbery surrounding our home, and fewer ants in the driveway ‘soup-kitchen’ line to the recycling bin.

Four weeks later, I am sleeping peacefully again, knowing that our insect-issues are behind us for the year. I begin to grow overly confident in our newly bug-free home.

TEN MONTHS from the date of our last appointment, the exterminator’s flier comes in the mail. “Your annual extermination services are due! We have scheduled your appointment for ‘x’, please call if this is not convenient!”

“Oh sure” I think, tossing the pink notice aside. “We don’t have a bug problem at all anymore!” I smirk confidently and make a mental note to cancel the appointment.

I then spot bigger, scarier, and bolder bugs in the house over the next three weeks, than I have seen in my ENTIRE lifetime. These are bugs on 'roids. They have taken over our home! The cockroaches just yell out when we walk into the kitchen “Shut the light off man! We’re trying to eat in here!” The sugar ants don’t even flinch when I turn on the vacuum.

In fact, I am now convinced that my exterminator has an army of trained insects which he drives around deploying on cue to homes in which his renewal notice ‘magically’ appears in the mailbox.

He probably chuckles to himself as he creeps around my house at night, releasing hordes of winged, crawling and legged creatures into my shrubbery. He whispers into the night like Santa calling to his reindeer on Christmas Eve…

“Now water bug, beetle, spider, and ants! On moths, on cockroaches, fly onto the plants!”

He’s lined my foundation with bug food, and they’re coming in droves. He knows they’ll find their way inside, it’s what they do. He rubs his hands together gleefully as he quietly slips my renewal notice into the mailbox.

Oh yes, he’s sneaky, and he’s good.

In the two weeks before my renewal appointment, I have now caught, vacuumed, stomped, and poisoned more 'big' bugs than I saw all year. I called the office this morning.

Can’t they get me in sooner?!

SOLD!

Thanks for the Comment. Not.

Are you Kidding??

I finally log back on to blogger...it has been awhile...I was discouraged because it seems no one ever read what I wrote!! There's just too many 'bots' out there...advertising, smut, news articles, and weird random oddities. I don't even know how many REAL people are REALLY writing about REAL stuff on here these days?

Take, for instance, my heart-in-my-throat trepidation and excitement when I realized I had TWENTY-ONE comments from 'readers' on one of my posts!!! Wow. I thought I had gained some kind of celebrity or notoriety, or a brief flame of popularity! My elation turned quickly to disgust when I realized that all the comments were electronic 'ghosts', programs designed to draw traffic to their own websites promoting all sorts of dubious things from personals to pool chemicals. What a letdown!!!

I believe I have as much chance of being 'discovered' here as if I stapled stories to telephone poles in random cities!!!

I am being marginally sarcastic, as I actually DO realize that the chances of anyone of note reading, liking, and requesting my 'blogger-isms', is unlikely...nay...dare I say...impossible? Call me a pessimist.

As it is, I am disappointed that the marketing junkies have found a way to pervert even a lonely housewife's musings with their auto-tagged comments. Sad, sad, sad world we live in, where a 'compliment' is generated via computer program, and hooked with a sell!

Apparently I am more likely to become the first female president of the United States, than to be read by ACTUAL human beings with the ability to offer me sound advice, true compliments (if warranted), or a job offer writing a column. I am Canadian. You see the likelihood.

As it is, I am rambling on to the echoing sounds of my own typing in an empty and (rarely) quiet room to release the frustration reading TWENTY-ONE comments that are really ads...has created.

Good night...and good luck.

Sigh.

K.

And Bingo Was It's Name-o!

I still wake trembling in the night, sweaty and disoriented, with the ghostly echo of rustling sheets and Bingo-daubbers...well...daubbing.

I think I can keep myself from falling into the geriatric Bingo revolution that has swept our nation...but sometimes I fear I shall find in my later years that the 'Bingo-Gene' has somehow been passed to me.

Several months ago I attended Bingo night in my (mostly) retired community with my (non-member) mother-in-law and her aging friend, (as a favor). It was frightening, occasionally exhilarating in a depressing way, overwhelming, boring, and yes, stressful too. This mix of emotions warrants some explanation so I shall attempt to share with you my experience.

We walk into the large gymnasium-style room of the local church, under glaring fluorescent lights and the scrutiny of seemingly hundreds of Bingo "PROS". These PROS are defined by their array of multi-pack playing sheets, rainbow-colored daubers lined up like marching soldiers in brightly quilted carrying cases, good-luck charms laid out precisely to assure the best luck possible, and assortment of energy-boosting carbohydrates in the center of the table. Many of these people are wearing Bingo-inspired clothing, or carrying Bingo-bags.

It was overwhelming to be so unfamiliar with the serious game of such a serious crowd. My mother-in-law informed me that I was to play the 'regular' game, (a value at $12 and roughly 8 games that to my horror, would last four hours of play!!!) I was NOT to try the 'fast play' sheets after the break, it would be too difficult for me to follow not having played before. (I was mildly offended by this...until we actually began playing.)

I mean, REALLY! Who couldn't manage to dot a few blobs of colors over the numbers when called? Well...me, apparently. Not only did I struggle to keep up to the calls, but my goodness, there were THREE patterns to find for each sheet played! Patterns?! Yeah, like the 'box kite', or the 'four corners'. What on earth happened to BINGO...five across, down, or diagonal? OH NO...my sheets were so covered in pink splats, you'd think I'd run through a paintball range. I could hardly make out what pattern there might be, never mind remembering which ones there were supposed to be!

Then one has the choice of following the TV monitors, (which are one step AHEAD of the caller), or wait until the mumbling elderly gent on the reverberating mike announced the number on the ball. I learned quickly it was a problem to play both. I was soon lost, and found myself stressing out over what numbers were called, what numbers I had, and what pattern I was supposed to look for.

And HEAVEN FORBID I should make ANY noise while fumbling lost and confused in the process. When I asked "What number was that?" in a 'stage whisper', I just about got my block knocked off by four bingo-bagged pros at the tables around me! I was blocking their bingo-karma...or wrecking their mojo while they played six sheets (roughly a thousand numbers) at a time.

Not only that...but I had the NERVE to get, (and take) a PHONE CALL on my cell phone in the middle of a game?? If looks could kill...they'd have had to call an ambulance. That was the shortest phone call of my life. I'm still afraid to answer my phone.

Then...there were these bitter-sweetly triumphant moments when I'd get three squares away from a 'win'. I'd start to get the bingo-buzz going on and I'd think "yeah baby...bring it!" Only to hear fourteen simultaneous "BINGO's" on the next pick. Sucker.

Round after endless round creeps on, the fluorescent lighting is starting to make my eyes water, the numbers are swimming in front of me, (definitely adding to the degree of difficulty), and each new 'call' is like blunt-force trauma. And...it's only half-way through the night.

I console myself with a few stale crackers and some ice water. I have fifteen minutes to 'stretch'...as I certainly won't brave the line for the bathrooms!! I head outside for a breath of fresh air, six mosquito bites, and fight the temptation to flee.

Upon returning I force a cheerful smile and make inane comments to my mother-in-law. Fortunately, she's delighted I attended and doesn't notice my distress. She chatters on happily while my eyes glaze over and I pray for a hurricane to strike us immediately.

Since I am playing Bingo...my prayers are not answered, and it's time to 'belly-up' to the table once again. This round, someone wins $500! The next...a winner walks with $250! Maybe there's something to this 'gambling' after all. Not. I'd rather pay NOT to have to play. Call me a cynic, call me a loser, call me a pessimist, call me a realist...just don't call me to play Bingo!!

Uh...no offense to the Bingo-lovers out there...it's just not for me. (See earlier Blog RE: Sudoku).

Peace out all!

K.

Fitness Barbie and Friends

It isn't as though you don't do it too...stare at the 'buff-chicks' at the gym, I mean. C'mon...let's be realistic. I huff along beside all of you at the local gym, and I see your eyes follow those spandex-clad fitness guru's as they walk by from one eye popping performance to another. You're not even men! Sure, they watch from the corners of their eyes, many stare outright, and plenty grin and nudge their dumbbell-pumping buddy while watching 'workout barbie' go through her abductor routine. We expect that. What we don't always think about is our own reactions to these ultra-fit examples of brilliant genetics, immense effort, expensive surgery, or what amounts to part-time job-workouts at the self-same gym. Do they eat like birds? Live on protein drinks? Nibble lettuce and eat boiled chicken breasts? How do we even get muscles in those places? Do all of us have them there??

I'm more aware than many women, probably, as I have the body image of a tree-stump. I am at the gym five days a week, fighting the good fight, and trying to keep from talking myself out of giving up and going home. With the sweat rolling in streams from face, bangs unceremoniously plastered to my forehead, and face red with exertion, I watch 'workout Barbie' with more than a little envy. She is staring into the mirror, focusing on her gluteus maximus, which she is straining into a muscle fit for Michelangelo to carve, on a piece of gym equipment that looks like a medieval torture device. Her brand-name outfit co-ordinates with her expensive shoes. Her tan is just right and her skin glows with a light sheen of perspiration, her hair is shiny and pulled into a carelessly flawless ponytail.

Am I intimidated? Heck yeah! Further than that, I find myself mixed with several emotions...envy at the results of her hard work (and/or superior genetics), bitter discouragement at my own jiggling, out-of-breath form, and even some admiration for her ability to perfect herself. This is always followed closely by the brief surge that maybe if I walk a little faster...a little longer...increase the incline a little...maybe I could get something like that someday. Not. Still, it's both a carrot, and a sledgehammer with which I taunt/bludgeon myself.

I wonder what 'those' girls think. They must know they look amazing...surely their lives are perfect and they reign supreme in their vast circle of admirers in the jet-set life of the rich and deserving. That's what the television preaches anyway. It's hard to imagine their lives are difficult, that they suffer discouragements or that they might not like the way they look. (Ha! Try living in MY body!!) Okay, easy there, if I put in the effort they did, I'd look different too. Hence, the conflicting emotions when I glance (a few times too many), their way. Hate and envy vs. admiration and longing for that kind of discipline.

That's one side of the coin. What's the other? Well...maybe someone is looking at me and wishing they were as far along as I am. Granted, I am no supermodel, no swimsuit edition hopeful, no workout barbie. I am the mother of four children, (three of them being born in the last four years), heading to my 35th birthday as quickly as gravity is taking over my body. I won't get into the list of "can't stand", or "I wish..." about my body. When I am at the gym, if I look around, I can see that there are brave women there, struggling to undo whatever damage life's done in the last few years. Some of them are much bigger than me, but they march along determinedly and I want to yell "GO SISTER!". I hope they never look around and get so discouraged about the length of the journey ahead that they peter out and falter in their goals.

I wish that those women who look so good would be friendlier, encouraging, smile more. They are often in their own world, wrapped up in their own image, taut and flexing in the mirrors. I am trying to change my thoughts from "I hate you! I hate that you look so good! I hate that my husband would notice you!" to "You have worked hard to get there. I wonder if I could do a little better with what I have. I think you look great, and I wish you happiness." I wonder what it would be to wake up and go through a day looking like that, never worrying about making sure my t-shirt isn't too snug, or if it's long enough to cover this or that. The only way I'm going to find out, is by not giving in to that voice in my head that says I can't do it...I won't ever look like 'workout Barbie', and I should just go home with a gallon of ice cream instead.

I mustered up the courage to ask one of those focused-fitness-queen's a question at the gym last week. She didn't bite my head off, look down her nose at me, or glare. She hopped off the machine she was using, showed me a few exercises, and gave me some tips on how to improve the area I was working on. I felt intimidated, a little nauseous, and like an outsider. She was great, really. Focused, yes. Hard-working, yes. Not necessarily going out of her way to be friendly at first, but she responded politely, and even smiled when sharing her own personal hatred of one particular exercise.

"If I hate it, I know it works...because it hurts" she says with a grin. (I try not to notice that she also has perfect,even, white teeth!) She spends five minutes talking with me, and I thank her for her efforts, pretending to have confidence in her presence that I definitely do not feel. I was proud of myself for approaching her with my question instead of just glaring at her, green with envy as she worked out.

It's not just me though. I notice women glancing discreetly at the other women in the gym. We all do it. (Maybe the 'Barbie's' don't...but having never been one, I don't know!) What I do know...is that for every one of those gym goddesses...there are five regular women, struggling to improve their health, self-esteem, and appearances with good old-fashioned blood, sweat, tears, and deprivation. I can appreciate that.

For now, I go to the gym five days a week, sometimes excited to go, sometimes kicking and screaming, sometimes dragging myself through a workout. I do the very best I can with my diet...and sometimes I don't. It's all a journey though...and for every woman I wish I could be, there are those who'd look at me and wish they were at least in my shoes already. To the gym-goddesses and fitness barbies...I say "great job!" (just stay out of the gym when my husband goes!!)

Yeah...It's Like That!

It's like having the whole family all together for Labor Day weekend. You've got coolers full of drinks, cold watermelon, tonnes of food, and you're at the boat dock staring down the shining length of your 32 footer. You back the trailer into the sparkling water, the sun is glistening off the chrome. Palm trees are waving lazily in a light breeze and the day just sings with the promise of the day to come. Your boat bobs gently in the surf, and you tie up to the dock to load everyone and everything on. With the sun warming your face and laughter in the air, you hit the ignition. 'Cough', 'sputter', 'RRRRRrrrrrr', the engine catches, roars to life...and 'cough', 'choke'...and it dies with a belch of smoke. You try again and again, each time getting the engine to turn over, then listening to it sputter and cough into oblivion. The silence on the boat is palpable. The air hangs a little heavier. There's a sense of unfulfilled expectation as you realize, that for all your planning, all your hopes for a big event...there's going to be a long ride home with some disappointed relatives.

Folks, welcome to my last three days worth of labor! My contractions kick in and get going along just 'swimmingly' at five minutes apart, one minute long. That's hard enough to have to breathe through...then 'cough', 'sputter', and with a final heave...the engine dies and I am left with the knowledge that there is absolutely nothing I can do to kick-start the engine if it doesn't want to go. This little boat will not float!! As it is, I am now obsessing every moment, focused on my large beach ball tummy and mentally jumping on every twinge like it might be a prelude to 'the real thing'. No such luck so far.

I know it's only a matter of time...but why can't it be MY time?! Who's driving this boat anyway?! Must we really leave the timing up to an infant who hasn't even taken it's first breath yet? It seems like a lot of responsibility for one little guy. I think every pregnancy should come with it's own red button to begin the countdown. It should be automatically supplied by every physician at 38 weeks. What's going on in the last two weeks anyway?? Like I need to gain another pound or two? Like the baby needs one more week to become a genius? Maybe I need more lessons in patience. Maybe I need to pick up a different hobby, childbearing and boating don't seem to be going well these days!

The Puzzling Challenge...or the Challenged Puzzler?

My dear husband insists I am secretly in love with logic puzzles. One quiet evening, as I am innocently reading a book, he bounds in from the computer waving a sheaf of papers and breathlessly asking me where we can find two pencils. Eyeing him a little suspiciously I procure the requested items, much to his enthusiastic, almost boyish delight.

"You have to try this!" he exclaims, a little flushed, flopping down on the couch beside me. He hands me a sheet of paper with a grid containing numbers and lines. Some numbers are missing. Some lines are bold, marking the small grid off not only by column and row, but by nine-square sections as well. Apparently he has found a 'math' game for me to try.

"No! Not math," he assures me quickly as he sees my eyes glaze and lip curl in distaste, "it's numbers, logic!" he says. Like this is going to make me feel any more relieved at the moment. His new-found brain-busting, self-esteem crunching game for his mathematically (and logically) challenged wife, is a real hum-dinger. It's a down loadable puzzle game called 'Sudoku', and to me, it represents all that is overwhelming about my inability to think linearly, logically, and even competitively. The goal of the game is supposedly clear. Enter numbers 1 - 9 in the squares so that the numbers are not repeated in any given column, row, or grid.

He happily trots over with my first try, a puzzle that has been rated 'medium' on the scale of difficulty. Sure. For whom? Cal-tech number crunchers? A government super computer? As for me and my overly emotional and creative self, I have now been asked to humiliate myself in front of my spouse who is clearly far superior with this kind of thinking.

I'd rather color in the boxes. Think of nine items to draw in each. Make up quilting patterns with the grid. Use the numbers to randomly think of shopping amounts to spend. Somehow I'm just not quite getting into the spirit of the whole thing. My husband is insistent in a spontaneous and childlike way, so I rally and attempt to tune in once more to his explanations of how to do it. My eyes are swimming in and out of focus as I stare at the grid of seemingly random numbers. Then he hits me with the final mental stressor. There's only ONE possible answer. One misplaced number sets off a chain reaction that causes all the other numbers to be wrong. He quickly shows me how to start seeing 'patterns' in the random digits that would preclude certain numbers from being written in those spaces. The knot of tension that was slowly building in my shoulders has grown to a full-blown cramp. Now I am under pressure to unlock the puzzle with the one, heretofore, undiscovered key.

It's all quite fascinating. If you have a gun to your head and a crazed mathematician threatening you, you might find the wherewithal to attempt to burn a few braincells on the thing. Out of respect for my husband, and his insistence that I would 'love' it...I tried. Really. For about ten minutes even. At first, I had that stabbing hope that I get when I start some unknown and previously untried activity...that I will somehow be a 'natural' reaching some unimagined proficiency and proving to be a prodigy. So far I have applied that hope to bowling, golf, painting, and a few other activities, all with the same results. Mediocrity, outright failure, or worse...bumbling unpracticed amateurishness. One-armed kindergartners bowl better than me. One-eyed, no-armed golfers can hit the ball while I swing the club consistently...into the ground, or an inch above the ball.

This puzzle proved to be no different. Within moments I was staring glassy eyed at the numbers I had placed so carefully and the holes in my logic made Swiss cheese look like 400 count percale. I found myself doodling around the borders. At first, just small designs. My husband was feverishly working on his puzzle, bright-eyed and practically smacking his lips in glee!

"Ah HA!" he chuckles, forgetting I'm even there, "here's the first number right already!" He shakes off his enthusiasm slightly to see how far I've got...and chuckles kindly but condescendingly at the fact that for all the numbers I do have filled in...the one that is right is blank. I grumble an incoherent remark and scrunch lower scribbling and erasing furtively for a few moments. Soon my pencil finds its way around and around the cube on the paper in a large circle, and almost of its own volition inserts a diagonal line bisecting the circle in the classic 'no smoking' sign. I have subconsciously signed off on the puzzle. As my eyes swim back into focus I feel the burden lift off my shoulders to be 'logical', intelligent, or even remotely interested in the game. I pick up my book again and lose myself in some empty brain-fluff once more.

Maybe I can't figure out how to make the numbers in the grid line up just 'so'...but thanks to years of reading...I can write about how un-fun it was in a way that will make someone, somewhere smile! Hey honey? Fill yer boots babe! May you become the Jedi Sudoku master! You go boy! As for me and my numerically challenged brain? I'll stick to Tetris and the occasional word game. I'll cheer you on with your logical puzzle solutions, and add up your numerical conquests...with a calculator of course.

A Tight-Knit(ting) Community

What are people thinking? Is everyone ultra-civic minded...or ultra nosy? In my neighborhood, the latter, unfortunately, is true. I live in a small community of seniors who have little better to do than rush to the window at the sound of a car slowing on the street. In fact, I have sneezed inside my kitchen...and had the neighbor call 'Bless you!' from his driveway! I have the only small children on my block. I yell sometimes, though my bark is far worse than my non-existent bite. I know my neighbors can hear me at times, and I am unapologetic for my lack of patience. Perhaps it doesn't bode well for the moments they have had to knock on my door to return my toddler who has dashed out into the driveway during the ten seconds I was in the bathroom. However, it isn't my parenting that is in question here!

Here are another couple of examples. A neighbor had a roof replaced by a crew of older workers who did a great job. Four different calls were made to ensure that someone came by to make sure the permits were in order. We had a trailer parked in our driveway for a couple of months after the hurricanes, and one of our neighbors took it upon himself to drive out of his way on his last day as a part-time seasonal resident, to complain about it to the trustees of our development! We hadn't even met him yet! It's not as though we had the hulk of a rusting car up on blocks in our yard. Au contraire! I planted flowers this year. Another neighbor commented that she thought we must have company since there was a new van parked in our driveway. We pulled in at midnight, with the new van we'd bought, and I talked to her in the early morning of the next day.

Today I had to laugh out loud at well-meaning strangers. At lunchtime, my husband popped out to his car for a quick nap in the parking lot at work. If you know our lifestyle with small children and him working two jobs, you understand. I've napped in the car many times, even just while out on errands! So there he is, in the sun, the door propped open to catch a breeze, the windows up, and enjoying a doze in the sun-dappled interior of his little Geo-metro convertible. Several minutes into his nap he is awakened by the screeching of brakes as an ambulance pulls to a hurried stop next to the car.

Blinking in the sunlight groggily and trying to get his tongue unstuck from the roof of his mouth, he realizes they are there for him. Someone, in passing, has seen him in the car and called in a 'dead body' in the parking lot! The paramedics are rolling their eyes too...but remind him of the picture he presented with his head lolling gently to the side, his mouth open, head back, tongue and jaw slack. If you were driving by, or peeking from between dusty venetian blinds, of course you wouldn't hear the booming snores that always accompany any sleep my husband enjoys. It's not as though someone was concerned enough to honk a few times, or stop by the car and yell, "Hey buddy, are you dead?!"

Let's just call 911 for an ambulance to rush to the scene of a middle-aged man with fifteen precious minutes to power-nap before heading back to his fluorescent lighted cubicle. It's not as though, with an aging population and demographic of mainly geriatric residents in our city, the paramedics might have some strokes, heart attacks or aneurysms to attend to.

Thank goodness for all our neighbors with their good intentions. I never have to worry about anyone stealing my rusty garden tools, my battered mini-van, or creeping surreptitiously around my house. I don't have to worry about my teens sneaking out at night, or my husband seeing someone on the side. (Like he'd have the time or energy!) I don't have to be concerned that after a year of living with a tarp on the roof, my contractor might not have a permit to fix my leaking ceilings. I can heave a sigh of relief that no visitors will make it to my front door unnoticed. Fortunately, I can also put to rest my irrational fear of having a heart attack in my vehicle during a short nap and not being discovered. The world is, indeed, a safer place.

2005 Hurricane Season Predictions

As are most Floridians, I am watching the 2005 Hurricane Season Predictions with trepidation. It is certainly true that though past history does not reflect the activity we experienced last season, it is not unlikely that Florida will remain a target in the future. Perhaps we won't get a four time, all-star, trophy-winning devastator like last summer, but it feels the same. Experience has made us wary. If just Charley had hit us, we would have had a season to note...comment on in passing...and, except for residents of Orlando, wouldn't have had much to say. Instead, we found ourselves at ground zero for two devastating hurricanes, weeks after Charley's unexpected fury, and days away from our fourth storm, Ivan, spanked the panhandle.

Again, my husband reassures me that this kind of activity is unlikely, remote, and not liable to be reproduced any time soon. Yet, this year Dr. William Gray and the Colorado State University have continued the active trend of last year into this one, with 13 Named Storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes.

*************************************

ATLANTIC BASIN SEASONAL HURRICANE FORECAST FOR 2005

Forecast Parameter and 1950-2000 1 April
Climatology (in parentheses) 2004 2005

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Named Storms (NS) (9.6) 13
Named Storm Days (NSD) (49.1) 65
Hurricanes (H)(5.9) 7
Hurricane Days (HD)(24.5) 35
Intense Hurricanes (IH) (2.3) 3
Intense Hurricane Days (IHD)(5.0) 7
Net Tropical Cyclone Activity (NTC)(100%) 135

PROBABILITIES FOR AT LEAST ONE MAJOR (CATEGORY 3-4-5) HURRICANE LANDFALL ON EACH OF THE FOLLOWING COASTAL AREAS:

1) Entire U.S. coastline - 73% (average for last century is 52%)

2) U.S. East Coast Including the Florida Peninsula - 53% (average for last century is 31%)

3) Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville - 41% (average for last century is 30%)

4) Expected above-average major hurricane landfall risk in the Caribbean

*************************************
http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/forecasts/2005/april2005/


Of course, Dr. Gray doesn't, and can't predict landfall, but with these numbers, it seems likely that we are in for another busy and for some, stressful, season.

It's funny that this time last season I was ready to deliver our third child, born a month before being whisked away in a whirlwind of chaos to evacuate not once, but twice. Like the memory of my labor is still unfortunately fresh in my mind, I find myself in the same predicament this year. Same bat cave...same bat-weather. Here I am again, imminently due, with the pain of both labor and the havoc, devastation, and fear caused by the previous hurricane season fresh as can be in my mind. In fact...I believe this baby was conceived during an evacuation. That doesn't bode well for this season's elevated activity then!

As it is, it seems like yesterday we fled our little home, after battening down the hatches against seemingly impossible odds, with our lives and hearts packed tightly into our Jeep. We returned to heart wrenching scenes of devastation few of us would have expected to see in our lifetime. In fact, I have only to open my front door to be reminded that we bear the scars of our last battle in the form of still-missing siding. This morning, I awoke to the lovely sounds of hammers as my dear neighbor finally gets her roof tarp torn off and fully replaced.

So to imagine that our hearts are in our throats a little, is justified. We aren't stocking up on water yet...or making runs on plywood and tarps...but our innocence has been lost, and our fears are fresh and real. We leave ourselves to the fates of wind and weather, and pray for safety in a season that seems determined to remind us that life is short and can change in the blink of an eye...of a hurricane. God bless us, everyone.

I Think I Can...

There are few things that can compare to the contradictory life of a two-year old. They are trying so hard to exert their independence, and still need so much help. My days are filled with these two sentences, and all the powerful emotions that accompany them: "No! I can do it MYSELF!", and "I no can do it!" Both statements carry the full dramatic weight of his frustrations at being 'big enough' and 'too small' at the same time. I don't know if there's another time of life the contrast is as clear again.

I find joy in his attempts at Independence, and I relate to his angst when he thinks he should be able to do something but cannot. As one can imagine, he has the patience of, well, a two-year old. That makes life a little more difficult for everyone. He attempts a task, finds he cannot immediately snap it into place as mommy can, and figures he 'no can do it!' This following a lively "No! I can do it MYSELF!" Herein lies both mother and son's frustrations! I remind myself that I do have patience beyond that of a two-year old, (though it doesn't always feel that way), and resist the urge to quickly take over and complete the simple task. Instead, I try to encourage him to try another way, or offer to help him do it. It's amazing both how much easier it would be just to do it myself, and how happy he is when he can do it himself. The contrast makes up for the moment you wish you could just do it and be done!

This contrast in life has also been closely followed by another. My sons are in the house much of the day and near the end of a long one, they are anxious to head out and see the world. Even if it's just a drive to the gas station, a trip to grandma's, or to pick up a few things at the store. The happiness I feel at being able to provide a small activity such as this, to 'get them out of the house', is quickly replaced by the strain of bringing the brief activity to an end. It's hard to give a toddler a 'fun' trip and then explain, that even though he hasn't passed out from exhaustion, explored every possible item within range, or visited until people have aged into retirement...it is time to go home. The tears and wails that accompany this message makes you wish he would shoot the messenger! It amazes me too that his sense of direction is so incredibly attuned to a fun activity coming to an end...that he can actually tell when we are pointed in the direction of home. Even when ranging farther from his every day territory than I would say he knew. It's like he has a homing beacon that goes off as soon as we point towards home, and his shrill cry of "I no wanna go home!" is the siren. Which strand of DNA is responsible for that I wonder?

I appreciate the difficulties that present themselves in the life of my toddler. I understand his frustrations. I wish he wasn't so loud about them...and I wish I was always graceful in dealing with them. We'll both learn. In the meantime...I'll have TWO more two-year olds to practice with. LUCKY ME!!

Insomniac.

Not many things will suck the life out of you faster than a vampire in a "B" movie. Though, a two year-old on a rampage, a boss in full-blown menopause, working the night shift, and laying in bed wide awake when you are desperate for sleep do come to mind. You start the whole mess by trying to force yourself to relax. You must empty your mind of all thought...though you will soon think you are going mad trying to do it.

It doesn't help to cover up the neon digits of the alarm clock. The numbers march on relentlessly as you lay there realizing you are still awake. There is a good chance that after an hour or more of trying to 'relax' you are now more tense than you have been throughout much of the day. Do you have a partner in bed beside you adding to the mounting mental friction with deep sonorous snores? You feel the resentment creeping in though you try to deny it access to your fragile emotions. Perhaps the neighbor's dog is barking across the way. Is there a branch tick-ticking against the glass of the window? Is the wind lifting a stray piece of siding so that it creaks and groans in a discordant rhythm? Maybe there's a cricket chirping monotonously and endlessly in the hedge below. They are always the ones that are too desperate for a mate to pause in their plaintive cries to listen for a response. It grows to a shriek while you try to tune it out.

You turn on the nightlight and try to read your novel. You're exhausted, eyes are getting grainy, spouse is snoring endlessly, and you nudge them into a roll in hopes of cutting the sound off. You stare, gritty-eyed, at the extra feather pillow between you and picture it muffling the sound. All by itself of course. You roll over, toss your book, and turn the light off. You switch positions, turn this way and that. Jam the pillow between your knees while on your side, stick one foot out, twist over the other way. By all means, adjust the pillow a few more times. Flip it over to try to get a cool side, or a steeper angle again. You'll do this at least a hundred times yet. Against your better judgement, you peek at the clock. It confirms your fears, in fact, it's worse than you thought. Now it's too late to take your sleeping pill. There aren't enough hours left to come out from underneath it. You know it's about to go from bad to worse.

Try counting. Lose track around fifty and start again. You get bored. The three lines of that stupid song you heard on the radio and hate, is playing itself like a broken record, over and over in your mind. You start to clench your jaw. The numbers on the clock march relentlessly forward almost audibly. You start the inevitable countdown. The kids will be up in 'x' hours...the alarm is going to go off in 'x' minutes...I have a high-pressure sales day tomorrow, without a break...I have company coming and will not get a chance to catnap. I have three children under the age of three. If you start the checklists for any of these activities, you're done. You turn on the nightlight again, grab a pen and paper and try to empty your head of your 'things to remember that I need to not think about right now' list onto paper. After purging with illegible chicken scratch the life threatening things you need to remember, (take out garbage, cancel hair appointment, Remember power point brochures, buy milk and diapers), you shut the light off again. You are sure that now you will find the rest you so desperately seek.

You feel yourself begin to drift off. Your body relaxes and your breathing finds a comfortable rhythm. That's when you start to itch. It's just one wayward spot on your left thigh, you figure you can ignore it. Pretty soon it's a full-blown attack of fire-ants just because you are trying to will it away. Your whole world revolves around that one tiny spot the size of a pinprick. You give up and scratch. You're wonderfully awake again. It's too hot. You turn on the fan. Get back in bed. There's light seeping in the room through a hole in the blind. You find a sock to prop against it. You're thirsty. You get a drink of water. Back in bed you find one word repeating in your head like you're trying to memorize it for a new identity. Now you have to pee.

Your partner is still snoring. You're ready to take out your .22 gauge shotgun and find the cricket. The dog has stopped barking, but there's a cat in heat somewhere. You stuff in earplugs. Now you feel as though you are underwater. You are getting hungry. After a bowl of cereal and checking your email, you head back to bed. The rumpled sheets mock you. Your pajamas are all twisty and irritating. You get up to have a hot shower. There's a bug in the bathtub.

Heading back to bed you wonder if it's possible you are actually asleep and this is an elaborate and tormenting nightmare. You pinch yourself. It hurts. The throbbing in your arm becomes another focal point. You flip over to the foot of the bed to escape the echoing snores directly in your ear. Your spouse's feet are eight inches from your nose, and those toenails look deadly. You picture that emergency room visit and roll over. You try singing all the words to a song. You don't know all the words to a song. You feel like an idiot. The same three lines to the one song you hate are still playing over and over in your feverish brain.

Now you see the dawn lightening the room from shades of black to grey. The furniture is becoming more than just black shapes to trip over. The alarm starts bleating from under it's pile of t-shirts. Your spouse groggily hits the snooze, once, twice, three times. You are quietly weeping. The baby slept all night for once. You did not. Your day is about to begin. You are about to experience the life of a zombie for the next twelve hours. Maybe you'll be so exhausted by tonight you will sleep like a rock. The baby won't. Good luck...

Oh No...Boring Blogs?

I realize that where my last post may have been insightful to me, others may find it pedantic or simplistic. Perhaps so. Perhaps I too fall into the category of 'boring daily journal' weblogs that so many seem to disdain. Including myself! Be that as it may, I will attempt to procure some intelligent and meaningful content in the very near future. However...the issue then becomes, what is intelligent and meaningful to the masses? Should it matter what is meaningful to the masses, or what is simply meaningful to me? For whom do I write?

A little mix of both parties would be a good solution, but I do not profess to know or understand what is politically correct, current, or even 'cool' to discourse on these days. My world revolves around my tiny life. That's the trouble with blogs in general I think, they are a forum for the 'me me' pulpit-pounding and sounding-off of everyday people. The trouble is, most of us are boring. At least in the sense that we live unremarkable lives. I hope that at the very least, I am a well-written bore. I should like to think that I have the natural ability to string together sufficient words to get across points that, though pedestrian, at least make a reader smile occasionally.

But here I am...going on about 'me' again.

Unfortunately, I tend to write what I know...and I know, well, me. As I come across interesting articles, (or, heaven-forbid, other articulate blogs), I will comment on them from time to time. However, this is all still 'one man's (er woman's) opinion'...so does that not just come back to 'me' again? What is a comment-based columnist like Andy Rooney if not just a peddler of his own opinions? Albeit a wealthy and successful one. Yes, he is wonderfully humorous, even thought-provoking, certainly skillfully written, and engagingly, enjoyably, sarcastic, but in the end? They are still, in their simplified versions, all about the 'me' that is Andy Rooney!

Perhaps my pregnancy woes, toddler's antics and random thoughts aren't the most riveting information on the web, but certainly, they could be worse. There is worse out there than 'boring'! Frightening is a word that comes to mind, shallow, maybe I'd go as far as to say 'psychotic'.

In the meantime, I will do what I know, expound on my deeply felt, if not profound or informative, knowledge of 'me', 'moi', 'myself', and our little corner of the universe. You like it, you read it! You don't? Why are you still here?!

Sailing an Ocean of Bizarre Blogs

Not to be judgemental...but am I the only 'normal' human in the sea of weblogs? I hit the "Next Blog" browser button at the top of my post to see what happened by. It began cycling me through random blogs. I got many foreign pages, can't comment on the content of those, naturally. Yet I came across so much existentialist, political, overblown and empty philosophy I was nauseated. Everyone was 'out there' in the cosmos. There were silly college 'roomie' diatribes, dark poetry, and disturbingly random thoughts that made one dizzy trying to follow them. People trying too hard to be 'deep'. People not trying to be 'deep' at all. People sounding so disconnected that it's hard to imagine an intelligent and functioning human on the other end of the keyboard.

I understand that blogs, (outside of the many advertisements and ad sites I came across), are random slices of humanity. The creation of individuals' saying and thinking what they wish...but why so many disjointed and bizarre posts? One must navigate through the scummy waters of muddy thinking looking for hope on the horizon in the form of clear, concise, intelligent verbiage. Most people seem to jot down words like a drunken sailor trying to stumble his way to the bathroom, here, there, everywhere, until they've forgotten where they were going or why they were going anywhere at all!

I don't know why I expect to come across blogs of interest, for the web is wide and large. I only know that I would actually spend more than ten seconds reading, and not just trying to get out of and on to the next one if I could find an interesting one out there. It seems I will have more luck finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. As for my posts...someone would have to actually spend ten seconds reading a few lines to catch a little intellect behind it, and it seems that no one has that much time to spend outside of their own bizarre little musings! Maybe I'm just too 'normal', maybe I'm dangerously boring. Maybe I'm not weirdly infinite, random or flaky enough to be considered 'zen', 'hip' or 'now'. That's okay by me. I'd rather be well-versed, somewhat talented, and in possession of at least rudimentary writing skills, than jump on the 'deep thoughts' bandwagon.

Of course, who am I to judge? Perhaps what we need in this world is just a little more chaos that doesn't make sense. Perhaps a few more sarcastic and meaningless questions, or a few dozen of someone else's intelligent quotes listed in random order, makes for a better read than mine. Oh yeah, let me try too:

"If toast always lands butter side up...and a cat always lands on it's feet...what happens if you strap a piece of toast butter-side up on the back of a cat and push him off the counter?" There. Figure that one out folks.

Seriously, I just think it would be interesting to accidentally bump into a blog that had some substance. I imagine navigating my way across the void of weblogs looking for another small ship that is staying afloat by writing interesting, everyday things. Maybe that's just me. A simple gal fashioned by values of an era not tainted by designer drugs and all-night parties. A pregnant, stay-at-home mom thinking out loud occasionally. Hmmm. Maybe I AM the minority! I certainly appear to be by the weird, random sampling of 'intelligence' and 'wit' out there! I better be alright with that...because no one may ever find me here on this murky ocean of literary refuse.

It's peaceful on my little erudite and bookish boat. The water laps the sides gently and a light, warm breeze ruffles my hair. Though it's dark here, and I am alone, there are stars twinkling in the clear sky, and I am not afraid. It's good to be 'normal', unremarkable, and steady on an ocean of strange fish and lurking underwater creatures. Happy sailing everyone.

'Me'-time

I am currently a stay-at-home mom raising (soon to be) four children, three of which will be under the age of three. My life consists of diapers, bottles, breastfeeding, cleaning up the highchair, picking up toys, endless laundry, meals, paying bills, cleaning, and the huge production of trying to go anywhere for an errand. I spend all day, every day wrapped up totally in my children, my husband and my home. That's what I asked for all my life! This is the dream I lived for! I just didn't know it would be so exhausting.

Somehow though...I wonder...how did I get so far away from raising horses on a ranch in Big-sky Alberta?! Where did my mountains go? How did I, with all my insecurities, end up on the Atlantic coast with beach bunnies and seniors competing for the most obnoxious views at the beach??! Since when did I cancel the possibility of ever skiing down the slopes again? How did I manage to marry someone who's idea of outdoor activity is begrudgingly mowing the lawn and a golf game once or twice a year? Don't get me wrong. It's not like I'm Mrs. Fit USA. In fact, my biggest form of exercise at the moment is dreaming about it.

I picture myself writing and perhaps actually publishing, taking various fine arts classes, learning to figure-draw, maybe taking singing lessons, travelling with my husband and kids on terrific vacations, walking, swimming (and being seen in a bathing suit without threat of being harpooned), biking with my kids, kayaking or canoeing, boating, riding horses, working out, eating healthy, playing softball and badminton with my sons, hanging out at our pool. (Which we don't have yet!) I picture a few small plastic surgery procedures in the future to reverse some of the damage I've managed to do over the course of my pregnancies. Is that my vision of the future? I hope so! In the meantime...these years of sleep deprivation, two-year old temper tantrums, and potty training will eventually cease. Then I will be called upon to actually make some of my visions into realities instead of just day-dreaming them. It is certainly up to all of us to make our personal goals, hopes and dreams become actual life experiences at some point.

I've managed the first half of things. The second half will have other unique challenges. Somewhere along that line I have to fit in and around my husband's ideals and goals too! Plus, we have to find a way to pay for it all. Therein lies the rub.

All this being said, I am thankful for my exhausting role in life at this time. I am also thankful that it won't always be this way. I cherish the hundreds of squeezes to my babies' fat thighs, and the thousands of kisses to their soft fatty cheeks, silken necks, and downy baby-bird hair. I survive through the diapers and sleepless nights, and I enjoy the work of bath times, mealtimes and bedtimes as much as possible. These too are moments to cherish, and ones that will end far sooner than most.

I hope there is time yet in life to work on the other stuff. The 'me' stuff. Right now is just not 'me' time. But someday...it will be, and I hope to make the most of it!

Reality Televison: The New Date-Night?

Who says television watching isn't a time of closeness and communication between spouses?

My husband and I watch a number of television shows (taped previously on our digital recorder so all commercials can be 'zapped' through in seconds, YEEHAW!) Of these shows, a large portion of them are reality television shows. We try to avoid the gratuitous ones like the plague. "The Bachelor", "Big Brother", and "Fear Factor" to name a few. Our favorites? Most anything by Mark Burnett. The guy's a genius when it comes to connecting you to people and wringing tears from you at their sorrows and joys as if you were an actor following a script. It's as though he has the power to reach through the television and edit us all into the story. An unexpected by-product of this are the long, sometimes heated, and always lively discussions I have with my husband over who's getting voted off the island, or what the teams ought to be doing with their task on 'The Apprentice'. The truth is, we've never been so involved, or emotionally staked in television shows! How about "The Amazing Race"? Brilliant. "American Idol"? Sure! "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" Wow. How about the unexpected hit "The Contender"? There's a reality show I never thought I'd be able to 'get into'. What a laugh! Mr. Burnett reached right into my living room and hooked me the first episode. Last night I cried when Bonsanto went home.

We watch series such as "ER", "CSI" (All of them), and a few newcomers that have quickly become favorites, "Numbers", "House", and "Jack and Bobby". Extremely well-written shows with great characters and skillfully produced plots.

The truth is, with the technology available to record our prime-time favorites then watch them later, sans commercials, sans children...we have fallen into a most enjoyable pattern of television watching. It's like date-night every night! We call each other to anticipate the outcome of this or that challenge on such-and-such a show that night. We give our evenings to the children, and once they are in bed and off to dreamland...it's mommy and daddy time! We break out the popcorn, watermelon, soda or whatever snack we're having, and settle onto the couch together to get lost in the lives of others for a little while. With the power to pause at any whim we are free to stop for anything. This comes in handy with small children needing last minute drinks of water, a bottle refill, telephone calls, or pregnant me heading to the bathroom yet again.

We also pause for conversation. We laugh, cry, giggle, discuss, enjoy, argue, entreat, persuade, and share our feelings and opinions about whatever is happening. These moments often lead to emotional connection about our own lives, struggles and daily challenges. We pause to remind each other of something that happened that day, or a concern that comes up. With busy schedules, little children, my husband working two jobs, a limited budget, our nights out are few and far between. Thank goodness for our date-night television! We look forward to our shows like other's look forward to a vacation. That being said...the summer is coming and this week and next pretty much wrap up the season. Season Finale week is probably among the most disappointing in our year! It's a good time to have a new baby. Often we compromise our sleep staying up beyond reasonable hours to watch our favorites in the evenings. We won't be as tempted to do so during off season, and with a new little one on the way, that's a good thing! It's almost like we planned it that way...ha ha.

I like our television time. I look forward to our television time together. I love our animated conversations. I am thankful for the entertainment provided. I can't imagine living without the ability to record and watch those shows at more convenient times, allowing us to prioritize our time with our children while they are up and about.

I know many experts suggest that television watching is not an acceptable form of connecting with one's spouse. I beg to disagree. At least in our case. So...as we say goodbye to our time with TV this season, we know that next will bring us back to our comfy spots side by side on the couch, remote in hand ready to pause and discuss with all sorts of emotion. In the meantime, a new baby, long summer days in sunny Florida, four children, and life...will keep us entertained and busy. The time 'til next season will pass quickly and happily!

Hope and Mother's Day

I am not alone in the weblog universe! Through some mischance of fortune, someone, an unbiased stranger, (as near as I can tell, unless my mother is using an alias and being mysterious...) has read my blog!

I thank you.

That being said, I thank you as well for leaving a comment. I also thank you for leaving a positive and encouraging one! Today, life is good. It was, indeed, a pleasant and unexpected Mother's Day gift. (My husband was very excited to wake me and let me know that I had received 'A COMMENT'!) He assures me it was not him. I choose to believe that.

Happy Mother's Day out there to all devoted, or should I say enslaved, moms! All brevity aside, I wish to take a moment to thank my own mother for her years and years of devoted service to her children and family. In the end, her rewards have been mixed, as well she knows. I know, however, that her greatest joys in life are her successful (relatively?!) children who have grown up to be good God-fearing, more-or-less responsible and productive members of society. Really, all five of us are pretty darn good kids. Her legacy will live on in the lives of each of us.

I don't want to go into the many incredible sacrifices she has made for us, but just take a moment to thank her for her selflessness and consideration of her children. She is as generous and giving as one can be. She juggles much in the way of stress and burden, and yet manages to give more than her share of comfort.

In the oft-quoted words of every grinning fool squeezing unexpectedly into the background shot of a television camera, "Hi mom!"...and thanks, truly. Love you!