With friends like that, who needs enemas?

Chad Hunt was the biggest creep in the first grade. He was cute, of course, because the biggest creeps usually are. And I only remember his chocolaty brown bowl-cut and seawater blue eyes because there's a photo in an album somewhere of us standing together on the front lawn of my elementary school holding Easter baskets. We were smiling with our arms tightly entwined and our navy blue ringer tee shirts were so very 80's I'm still getting messages from Maxheadroom about how cool I was.

I was missing a tooth in the front because Chad had pushed my head down into the water fountain during PE just days before the big egg hunt. And since we were the last two in line to get our drink-on after the big tether ball tourney, nobody saw it happen. It was him, me, and my tooth swirling around in the water fountain drain with what seemed like gallons of blood and a piece of ABC gum.

Now I've admitted before that I was quite the hypochondriac in school, so it really shocks the hell out of me that I didn't run straight to the coach and cry my eyes out about going to the school nurse for a useless sandwich baggie of ice and a doleful phone call to my mother about the whole account. I plucked my tooth out of the fountain, rinsed it in the perfect arc of cold water, and then walked away without even the slightest inauspicious glance behind me at the creep. It hurt. I'm sure of it, but I shoved the first pearly casualty of my baby-hood face into a front pocket and fell in step with the rest of the class.

For the remainder of the day, I was cooler than everyone else. I even gave Amanda Fletcher a run for her money and she was wearing a new Jem and the Holograms shirt. Kids noticed the newly vacant hole in my smile and asked to see the tooth. I obliged. They ogled. And Chad Hunt avoided me for the last half of the day. He was probably worried I'd tell on him, but I didn't.

I don't recall an occasion where he pushed or bullied me again, but that's not saying much. I don't even know why this one little tidbit of a memory about a knocked-out tooth has stayed with me all these years. Elementary school was a giant collection of rubber bands in a ball all over-lapping and colorful in their own matrix of smiles and tears.

I let Kasey Kane cut my hair with safety scissors, and subsequently traded a girl some jelly bracelets for her plastic headband thinking my mom wouldn't notice my bangs were, well...gone. A sweet girl sitting next to me peed in her chair because she was scared of Miss Whitney and couldn't bring herself to raise her hand or interrupt while the witch was talking. And I watched the Challenger go down in a feathery trail of smoke on an old television set sitting atop a rolling cart while teachers ran in and out of classrooms crying and shaking and scaring the bejeezus out of all of us kids who didn't know what the hell was happening. The memories are jumbled and out of order in my head.

We visited Ladybug's new elementary school last week and her daddy brought to my attention how everything was just like when we were kids. There were little plastic chairs and ugly brown tables and desks. Giant bins of crayons, glue, and the odd pair of safety scissors tucked into cubby holes waving their white flags for the end of the school year. Words written on cards posted on easels- at. cat. the. pig and shiny star stickers on poster board charts meriting the achievements of tomorrow's leaders and heathens.

It even smelled like disinfectant. And glue. And everything was so... short. Ladybug walked through the mazes of little chairs and looked at the projects the "graduating" classes were finishing up and touched her pristine kid-fingers to toys that would soon be at her disposal to explore. I thought about Chad and Kasey and the little girl who peed in her chair and was so excited for her to be on her way to making those moments -those colorful pieces of rubberband- that will be jumbled and mixed up with the rest of her life's treasures one day.

She'll find herself recalling, with great detail, bits of school days forever preserved in scrapbooks and miscellaneous folders. Boys whom she remembers being afraid of will be posed in photographs with her and she'll have a tiny box of teeth and "first haircut" clippings somewhere in my spare room closet to ask about when she signs her own children up for Kindergarten one day.

The only difference between her memories and my own will be the awesome side pony-tail I sported for every school photo during the eighties and maybe a few pairs of tight-rolled jeans. I'm excited for her. School was super. Incredibly super.

Ikea Fruit Hat Face
one for the scrap-book

so-so sorry

I was going to try and put off posting again because the last thing JG did before he left the house this morning was mock me for whining about my wrists and arms hurting- which I think is caused by a mild pregnancy-related case of carpal tunnel.

Wait, the LAST thing he did before he left was kiss me and all that gushy stuff, but that doesn't give me any sort of excuse to be so long between blogs....

I have probably scribbled down a dozen or so little snippets of things I meant to write about over the week, but they are all on the back of Target receipts and paper napkins wadded up and lost at the bottom of this weeks purse (the white one from Canal St. summer '08). Don't worry, if any of them were worthy, I'd be wowing you with my literary prowess right now instead of posting a photo of myself wearing skirts for shirts and trying to NOT zombie-out to Tom Bergeron on America's Funniest Home Videos.






FYI: I look like a baby pterodactyl when I complain about my arms hurting.

Happiness is drawer full of clean underpants. Or: How I use some form of the word HAPPY eleventy-million times and mean it all eleventy-million times.

Because I am finally seeing a pinpoint's worth of light at the end of this tunnel called pregnancy, I often catch myself smiling and laughing at things that aren't really that funny. And then laughing harder because the sound of a really-real laugh coming from my own body makes me so incredibly happy these days. I equate it to eating candies in church, which I haven't done since I was eleven, but remember being the only thing remotely enjoyable about church. Butterscotch from the bottom of my grandma's purse.

So I'm having a morning. A good one, wherein the vacuum being out of commission another week is not making me want to crawl around on my hands and knees picking up threads and mulch from the carpets, and my belly is full of blueberry bagel with cream cheese. Where I usually look around at the house and think, what do I need to do today? as soon as my husband and daughter leave for work/school- I'm thinking more along the lines of wow-i feel pretty good and nothing really needs to be done today that I don't really want to do.

What do I do now? Well. I write a blog entry, eh-hem, about the ways my life is getting ready to change and how I'm suddenly not scared or worried about it, but chomping at the bit and ready to gallop full on into motherhood 2.0. And how happy it makes me to be able to type that with such honesty.

Call me lazy, but I am looking forward to having two kids because it's going to keep me busy enough that I won't have time to look around at the house and notice all the stuff I haven't done that typically sends me into a guilt spiral about being the world's worst mother/wife/person. This will be a miracle. I'm already using baby #2 as an excuse to let stuff go. (And I'm okay with that.)

Having a baby outside of my body means I can wear any shoes I want because bending over will be a cinch again. The simple act of putting sock on or painting one's toe nails is so underrated it's scary. (Seeing my lady parts will also be nice again, but I'll abstain from further details on this one.)

My own attitude won't be the only one morphing around this new household dynamic. The subtle change on my husband's face when he gets home and remembers that there's ONE more person who is happy to see him and will (one day soon) be running at his legs when he comes through the door after work.... that is something that tickles me pink. I have an uncanny desire to repay my husband for all the happiness he's given me in our few years together and I think that this one simple thing will make up for the times he looked in his top drawer and there weren't any clean underpants to wear.

I said underpants.

But seriously, I know I'm not always the poster-woman for motherhood or even someone who can give good advice to others about being a parent. I don't pride myself on being a good mom because I've come to realize that the sum of my parts adds up to more than just a mother. And more importantly, I'm not perfect. My desires more often include the happiness of my daughter and my husband and I frequently put them first, but I am learning that my own feelings and dreams are still alive and beating hard. And in order for me to be the best I can be at teaching, loving, learning and helping my family... the more important it is for me to include my happiness with theirs.

My step-dad used to say about his mother, "If mama ain't happy... there ain't nobody happy." A silly sounding adage I think, but all too true. My family looks to me for many things. This is a fact that scares and stuns me more than it delights me. Sure, I keep capri-suns in the fridge for my daughter because she loves them and I'm trying my best to make sure my husband never sees the bottom of his underwear drawer. But these minutia only make things easier.

What makes them happy is looking around and seeing everyone else happy. Hearing the person next to us laugh or burying our faces in each others necks and saying i love you. It's happiness that's holding those words up and pushing them out from our guts. And our own bite of bliss is directly related to the people we love and how much they are gnawing on at any given moment. And in about forty-one days (give or take), the piece of happy-pie I've been lucky enough to stuff my cheeks with will get just a tiny bit bigger.


It's Friday. Let yourself get caught up in this little bit of magic my husband sent me. You've earned it just as much as I have.

Twofer

My daughter didn't even ask my husband if she could call him daddy. She just bopped into the living room one day and told us that she was going to. And although my husband does his very best to respect Ladybug's biological father- she didn't need to break his pinkies to get him to agree.
Jed's been playing weekday daddy to my darling cupcake since she was just about a year old and it didn't take more than one butterfly eyelash solo before she had him completely wrapped around her tiny little finger. But because he's a good and respectful man, he's always known just where to stand outside of the bubble she and her biological father have been floating in since... well since she first batted her eyes at him on day numero uno.
Jed knows when it's his turn to be daddy and when to let her father take over the reins on the weekends. We've been successful at working as a team when making important kid-decisions such as where to enroll for Kindergarten and such, so I'd say things have gone pretty well so far considering the somewhat awkward circumstances that go along with having three parents. We're all just now getting comfortable in the flow of parenting together, I guess you can say.
So, this weekend we picked up Ladybug from her dad's house in Orlando and were kind of hanging around in his back yard analyzing the lumpy lemons growing on his citrus tree when suddenly the bubble popped and the daddy's got all mixed up.
Of course, it was funny to her that "Daddy" answered when she called his name when she really was calling for my husband. Funny for the rest of us? Not so much. We all skipped a beat or two before falling back into the lumpy lemon observations and I think my face turned three shades of red before things went back to normal.
It really got me thinking on the way home about how much different this life is going to be for my Ladybug than the life I had. As far as a father is concerned, I was pretty much broke in that department where her little cup runneth over.
Where I spent much of my childhood sitting on the front porch waiting for my own father to show up, she will have one doting man on either side of the door at any given time. She won't ever look into an audience at a play or a crowd at a softball game and desperately search for that one pair of eyes because chances are...there will be two sets of eyes and two pairs of hands clapping wildly and cheering for her with equal zest and unmatched pride.
And I'll be sitting somewhere nearby thanking my lucky stars that there are two great men her life who couldn't feel luckier to be wrapped around the same little girl's finger.

Trying new things.

I'm going to jot down today's entry old school style with some paper and a pen. For some reason, just looking at my computer lately makes my wrists ache, so I'm going to try a new technique. Write and then type.

We'll see if that helps at all.

Jessica Simpson and my dog aren't FAT!

I recently took little brown dog to the vet for a checkup/shots update and received some pretty somber news. Our quirky vet has a curly mustache and effervescent personality to match and it's really kinda hard to take him seriously while he's rolling on the floor with the dogs and telling stories that start with "one time a cow sat on me and I almost died".
So on this particular visit I just looked at him and laughed uncomfortably when he told me that our miniature-pincher was.... "fat". He just sat on the floor making out with my dog until I stopped laughing and then said, "Really, he shouldn't have a beer belly,"
He looked at me with the most sober expression I've ever seen on a man wearing a lab coat covered in dog piss. For a second, he even had me feeling ashamed. As if I went home every night and shared my ice-cream and cupcakes with the little brown dog or something. (Like I'd waste ice cream and cupcakes.)
The whole scene made me think of this celebrity news story and before I could say "say whaaat" I was being told to cut my dog's kibble supply down by half. He even looked at me from under his bushy gray eyebrows and demanded I cut down on snacks. (Looking back, he could've been talking to me in that instance.)
But seriously, I thought maybe he had swallowed some sort of horse hallucinogen before my appointment. Like all the people who called Jessica Simpson fat when this photo came out...



I'm not big on dieting and it goes without saying that I think my tiny dog needs to watch his waistline as much as I do these days. So, today while I poured some dry cereal into a bowl for my daughter's three o'clock snack-attack, I spilled a few Golden Grams on the floor and little pooch came swooping in from his pedestal/pillow in the bedroom and gobbled them up before I had a chance to bend my fat-butt over and pick them up. And then he thanked me with a little yip and took off to resume his perch.

He's never looked so happy. Except maybe the other day when I "spilled" a hot dog.



You're welcome, pal. I'm on your side.

potpourri

Kindergarten. Starting in August my daughter will be an official member of the Kindergarten association. I'm assuming she'll get a badge and some sort of weapon to wield in the hallway in case the "big kids" try to throw their weight around or steal her pudding cup at lunch.
I don't remember kindergarten. Except for the naps and snacks, so maybe I'm suppressing some horrible memory. I think she's ready. I think I'm ready.
More on this subject after orientation day in a few weeks.

***

Also, I miss getting mail that doesn't come in an envelope with a see through window. Or have "urgent" stamped somewhere on the front. I'd really love a letter. Wouldn't you?

***
I caught Cadence chewing on a cupcake wrapper the other night. I laughed until I peed. By the time I figured out that she was hiding behind the kitchen island ten minutes after devouring the cup's actual cake - it had been masticated into a tiny pink wad which resembled a piece of ABC gum.

me: are you crazy?
she: it's sooooo gooood
me: (tears and pee)

Best ending to a Tuesday night I can think of.

***

Wednesday night I stood in the shower for twenty minutes. I washed my hair, read the ingredients on the back of all the bottles in the shower caddy, and then made promises to my razor I probably won't own up to for a few months.
Oh, and I cried. And fantasized about running again. Not that I ever was an avid runner, but because I felt like I really needed to run, but I couldn't. Kind of like the bike thing.
My husband tried so hard to "fix it" and do whatever he could to make me feel better, but I guess I was doing exactly what I was supposed to- drowning in the shower and sobbing- because when I got done I was so much better.
It's the worst part about pregnancy, if you ask me. The sore feet, tired back and umpteen trips to the bathroom don't rank nearly as high on the gall-scale as the emotional crud-puddle I'm dragging my husband and daughter through these days.

Sorry, family. It will all be over soon.

And then we can stick to crying for really good reasons. Like before.

***

My husband picked out our new baby monitor. It has lights, sound, an antenna and A/C adapter. Oh. And chrome. And the number 900 on the front. It kinda looks like it could "take off" if it so decided to. Good pick, honey. Now that I've made a conscious decision not to worry about the Swine Flu... I can start being concerned about making contact with inhabitants of other galaxies through our baby monitoring "system".

Take me to your leader.