new beginnings

March 8, 2012 By

I quit my job.

Well, that’s a bit of a lie.  I walked out of my job as General Counsel for a large and wonderful company to stay home more.  To bake and volunteer and write.  And take the occasional calls from my former company that might crop up that they find useful to ask a lawyer.  But working from home in an oversized t-shirt billing by the hour, taking occasional phone calls from doctors that have questions, isn’t the same as really working.  I’ve always worked.  I went to law school to earn a great salary and feed my brain and wear heels.  I love heels.

But finally, I admitted to myself that I couldn’t keep up. There were select toilets in our home that even our dog wouldn’t drink from.  I was forgetting to pay bills and couldn’t seem to pack lunches and was always screaming at my daughter to get her shoes on.  I almost cried when I tried to bake homemade bread one weekend and the dough wouldn’t even rise.  My life was starting to spin out of control.  With two small children and a brain that never shuts off and writing that was finished inside my head but not yet recorded on paper, something had to give.  I was tired of running.  I was tired of yelling.  I was just flat-out tired.

So I stopped.

It’s been exactly four days since my newfound freedom.  I sent my son to day care every single day, which perhaps I should feel guilty about.  But I don’t.  I did heaps of laundry and sent off thank-you notes and made some tea.  I read some articles I’d been meaning to read and unpacked boxes of law books I schlepped home from my office.   I took a nap and read to my daughter and opened my eyes to what I’d been missing all this time.   Peace, really.  And clean toilets.

So here I sit.  I can feel a dozen years of legal experience begin the slow process of atrophy.  I can see that hanging on to my old world will not last forever, although billing by the hour is nice.  I feel God tugging on my sweater and tapping me on the shoulder, like something is just around the corner – up ahead.  I just can’t quite make it out with all the fog around me.  I’m defogging.  And praying.  And trying to learn how to bake bread.  For real.  Someone needs to send me a better recipe.

It’s a huge leap to quit a career.  It’s easy to tell people it’s for the kids.  So you can be a better mother.  But I didn’t think I was a horrible mother before.  I think it’s more about finding your footing.  Making sure the place that you stand is the place you really want to be.  Right now, in this moment, I know I’m heading in the right direction.  That’s something.  Even though it might not involve heels.

So here’s to freedom, wherever it takes me.  Probably to the grocery store.  And the bathroom, to clean more toilets.

Filed Under: Career, Motherhood, Religion, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

Twenty Random Things I said to my Five-Year-Old this Week

March 7, 2012 By
  • No, honey.  Mosquitoes are not amphibians just because their eggs float on top of the water.  That doesn’t count.
  • Butterflies don’t make honey.  That’s a job only for the bees.
  • Where exactly are the heart pains?  Show me.
  • It doesn’t matter if bees and butterflies are best friends and they share nectar.
  • Yes (in response to “did you know that [Hey Soul Sister] is my favorite song?”)
  • I’m on a conference call in five minutes, so this is the last piece of tape I’m going to give you.  The last one.
  • No, you can’t go to [the babysitter’s house] just because you have a fever and can’t go to school and she lets you watch videos on utube.  You’re just stuck staying home with me.
  • Trillion is a word, remarkably.  Ask any government official.
  • You still need to make a get-well card for your great grandmother, despite the fact that “you’re sick too.”  You have a 99 degree temperature, and she’s in the hospital with a broken hip. It’s not the same.
  • Bees.  That’s it.  Those are the only guys that make honey.  Why is that so difficult for you?
  • Yes, you do have sags under your eyes
  • Earthworms are also not amphibians even though they wallow around in mud after it rains.  Still not the same.  But great question; I can see the confusion.
  • You’d rather have chicken-and-stars soup out of a can than this [homemade pasta with fresh spinach and feta cheese and basil pesto]?  So that’s a yes, I take it.  Super.
  • No.  I will not save that leftover two tablespoons of broth for you in the refrigerator for later.  When exactly will you eat that?
  • Please don’t keep giving your brother pacifiers behind my back. It’s annoying. He doesn’t need three of them at once.
  • I just love this necklace of yellow pom-poms and random beads you found in your dresser. I’ll treasure it forever.
  • Why did you leave me a “very special love note” that reads “glow in the dark?”  Oh, you just copied it from that puzzle box over there?  That’s cool.  It works.
  • Did I say it wrong?  The book clearly says “Repunzel.”  Oh, my bad.  “Barbie as Repunzel.”  That’s different.
  • I’m sorry your head feels like a thousand knives are shredding it into pieces. That really must hurt.
  • Right back at ya (in response to her double-hand squeeze plus two taps at the grocery store, which is our special way of saying I love you to each other in public so that it’s not cheesy and embarrassing).

And tomorrow’s only Wednesday. . .

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , , ,

blog envy

February 27, 2012 By

Let’s talk about blogs.  Some are snarky and edgy.  Some are serious and make you darn happy you don’t have a seeing-eye-dog.  But most are just fun and pretty, with creative names like “farm-girl-flower-power-cookie-pants” that make you want to stop by and visit, like you’re an old friend popping over for tea.  Except with handmade sugar cubes and madelines and hostess gifts wrapped in brown paper and twine.

If you search for half a second, you’ll find some beautiful blogger who lives on a farm and dedicates her life to building joyful memories for her children.  She bakes heart-shaped cinnamon rolls and wheat germ chicken nuggets.  She dreams up craft projects that instill character and creativity in a three-mile radius. She collects odd and beautiful things like wooden spoons or pewter vases or antique hats.   Who in the world collects antique hats?  And in case a picture is worth a thousand words, she captures the process of making buttermilk pancakes with her Nikon, the finished product displayed on a vintage china platter with little turrets of syrup running down like an afterthought.

I hate this perfect person, sipping with glee on chilled raspberry lemonade.  There’s no way I can hold in my stomach or put makeup on or get all my laundry done, much less make paper lanterns.  I tell my children to find something else to do that doesn’t involve screaming or coloring on the floor tiles while I scrub the dried baby food off the chairs or fold bath towels.  Never once do I sit down and make a wreath of dried flowers. Or have a discussion at the dinner table that’s worthy of blogging about.  Our dinner topics usually center around how many bites of a given vegetable are required before an excused exit.

“Eat your asparagus.”

“But I hate asparagus,” my five-year-old moans.

“You don’t hate it.  You might hate things like monsters and evil and rotten fish.  But this is asparagus!  It’s yummy and grilled!  It’s dusted with sea salt!”  She just stares at me like monsters and asparagus are on the same exact level.

So when I’m trying to conquer unrelated piles of old bills and insurance paperwork, mixed with children’s artwork and coupons, I feel like an utter failure.  Why am I not tying a towel around my childrens’ necks and snapping pictures of them jumping off the coach like superheroes?  Why are we not eating frittatas with arugula, or making a may pole?  Those pretty, cooking, farm-loving, crafty bloggers make me feel all inadequate and un-motherly.  And to top it all off, they make me laugh one moment and tear up like a Hallmark commercial the next.  One has a rare blood disorder and adopted three children from Vietnam.  How can I possibly hate that?

It says in Ecclesiastes that all the toil that comes from envying one’s neighbor is pure vanity and is just striving after the wind.  4:4.   So if I dropped what I was doing and made a fabulous batch of cinnamon scones, does that mean it’s all for not?  I think it depends on who I’m trying to impress.  And what recipe I used.

Hate, after all, is reserved for monsters and evil and rotten fish.

Women bloggers are lovely strangers, blessed with wildflowers that bloom every spring, with great recipes for chicken pot pie and peanut butter bars.  They are just mothers, like me, who have moments of brilliance and beauty and joy amidst the unfortunate discovery of shriveled-up hot dogs found under bedcovers.  I am glad they are raising up such strong and spirited children that make the world a better place. They are trying to live simply, and have the guts to write about it. We should all strive to reach that balance, and to plant this world with the same rich heritage seeds.

Thank God for these writers, and discovers, and healthy recipe hunters, who give us ideas and motivation and encouragement.  One rainy Tuesday, when I think of a craft project out of the blue for our two edgy children, I’ll thank them.   Our daughter will beg to watch television and our son would rather eat more applesauce or stick his hands in the dog’s water bowl.  I’ll be the one left sitting at the table gluing shards of paper onto coffee filters, and dinner will consist of scrambled eggs and toast. But still. Thanks all the same.

There’s always tomorrow, when we will have lemon buttermilk pancakes with sugared walnuts.   Too bad my camera battery’s dead and no one will ever know.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, Religion, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

10 things I can’t say to my children

February 26, 2012 By

(1) You are so beautiful it makes me want to cry.

(2) Please stuff a sock inside your mouth or go someplace I can’t hear you.  I can’t take all that stupid crying over the fact that you can only have two granola bars and not three.

(3) You look really grown-up in that outfit and it’s scaring me a bit.

(4) I just don’t want to be around you right now.  Or the next few days, really.

(5) Please don’t ever leave me.  Move down the street and let me walk your babies in the wagon and we can talk about books and babies and recipes.

(6) I caught myself singing the Word World theme song during a budget meeting, and I totally blame you for that.

(7) Please remember all the things I do for you, because making bread from scratch is a real pain

(8)  You look so silly in that outfit, and if you’d only let me dress you I promise you’ll look back and thank me someday.

(9) I wish you’d learn to read more effectively because this sounding-thing-out thing is getting really old

(10)               Occasionally, when I’m watching you play, I’m so happy I can’t move for a minute.  Like I’m tipsy on good champagne and I don’t want to ruin the feeling.   Please God, don’t let me forget this moment ever.  Even if I can’t remember the president or how to eat soup.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , ,

kids eat free

February 21, 2012 By

I saw it like a beacon of light on my way home from work.  Wednesday Nights.  Kids Eat Free.

I’m not usually one for such marketing schemes, but I was tired of coming up with dinner ideas, and Wednesday is my favorite day of the week, after all, and didn’t I deserve a night off?  I declared it so and announced to my husband to meet me there promptly at 5:30 pm.  I’d enjoy a bowl of soup while my kids munched on chicken quesadillas with pure delight oozing from their grateful little bodies.  It was a good moment, while it lasted in my head.

I pulled into the parking lot at 5:15 and my iphone sent me a meeting update that I had a conference call scheduled at 5:30.  One I absolutely could not miss.  So the moment my husband pulls up, I dumped two kids in his arms while talking on the phone and waved in the air like “well obviously I’m busy right now.  Please take these things off my hands, for goodness sakes.”  He stared at me with I so hate you right now eyes and schlepped the kids inside.

Finally, we are all sitting down and I quiz the waiter about the claim of free kids vittles.  He indicates that upon purchase of an adult entrée at the highest possible price, they’d throw in a tortilla wrapped up with cheese and a soda disguised as a kids meal. Since I just wanted a cup of soup below the required price limit, that meant only one of our kids was eating free.  The only logical choice was for one of our children to simply starve.

After a long wait, the waiter finally decides to tell me that my daughter’s lemonades are costing us three dollars a pop and aren’t included in the free part, so maybe she might like a refill of water? My son then develops an infatuation for drinking straws and decides he needs as many of them as possible to clutch between his tiny fat fingers.  When one drops, he screams “STRAW MAMA!” at the top of his lungs because we just haven’t quite mastered the inside voice and because straws are apparently super fun to just hold for no apparent reason.

Suddenly, my daughter whispers that she must use the restroom immediately, so I rush up to take her.  My departure makes a great impact upon my son, who seems to feel that he’s going to become motherless and abandoned right there in a Mexican restaurant amidst the piñatas and pink tablecloths.  He shrieks out my name and cries in horror, clutching his straws, until I reappear.  My husband just sits there, holding his head in his hands, wishing he was back at work writing a brief or something.  My son’s fake tears dry up the moment I arrive and he simply says “why hello, mama” like nothing ever happened.

We finally get our food, and while my husband is clearing a space for his tacos he knocks over his tea, which lands on my lap, and I’m all “this is so fun!  Let’s all have a good laugh about how kids eat FREE!  Yippee for us!”

At some point my husband makes the “let’s blow this joint” gesture, and he pays while I scoop up all the stray chips that have been flung in a four-foot vicinity of our table.  As he’s taking the kids to the car, it occurs to me that the bill is quite high.  Too high.  It hits me like the smell of bacon.

Our kids did not eat for free.

I marched up to the hostess stand and demanded my $5.95 back.  What kind of two-bit joint is this anyway? The lady just looks at me with mascara smudged on my face and crazy hair and red marks on my arm where my son was bopping me with straws. The credit card machine was busy and my waiter was annoyed and my husband wondered where the heck I was.  But I wasn’t about to walk out now.  Not when I was a sucker for such a stupid marketing ploy.  How long have I been a parent, anyway?  Didn’t I major in such foolish mind-bending communications in college?  Didn’t I know better than to get my two-year-old out in public at that time of day?  I blame it all on myself as I plunked down money for a new (and lower) grand total, putting my hand on my hip and realizing my jeans are still soaked with wet tea.

So, my friends, the next time you see such a claim about kids eating free and with wild abandon, run.  Run far and fast.  Away from said restaurant with straws and distant bathrooms and back toward home, where you can brown some broccoli and heat up some macaroni noodles.  At least life is calm, and lemonades don’t cost three bucks, and no one is screaming.

I noticed that Tuesday is Dollar Taco Night.  Sounds promising.  Maybe we should go for it?

Some people never learn.

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , ,

karaoke

January 30, 2012 By

During the week, my husband and I pass each other in the house as if we’re both servants in Downton Abbey. We give commands and trade off duties and bargain.  You give baths and I’ll read bedtime stories. You change the boy’s diaper and I’ll get a hot stone massage.  Okay, so I made that last one up.

But we’re busy folks, raising two kids and working and trying to keep our house free of small cars and doll clothes underfoot.    And we both loathe cockroaches, which means we actually have to do dishes and wipe off the crusty food from my son’s chair after dinner and take out trash.  It’s exhausting.  So this weekend, we sent the kids to grandparents.  I’m thinking great wine and late nights and crunchy tacos at 2 am and lots of rated-R movies.  I’m planning on sleeping late and catching up on laundry and taking a hot bath.

On Saturday afternoon, my husband went outside to mow the lawn and I went whistling inside to do some laundry. No snacks and naps and fits and messes.  No one to unfold my sheets and streak up the glass and whine about eating broccoli.  Freedom at last!  A clean sparkling house!

I went inside and stared at the pile of dirty clothes.  That is so extremely dull.  I walked into the kitchen and looked at a dirty pan in the sink.  Yawn.  I’ll do that later.

So I went upstairs and did what normal, healthy, well-adjusted, people-above-the-age-of-twelve do.   Watched music videos. I was having such a fabulous time downloading lyrics and memorizing songs and watching Adele belt out ballads that I stood up in front of my computer with my iphone as a microphone and busted out a great rendition of “Set Fire to the Rain” in my pajamas.   I lowered it a bit so I didn’t squeak out the high notes.  I felt strong.  Powerful.  I could so totally rock this in a bar somewhere.  Maybe I should record a CD and rat my hair up four inches.

Then I heard the back door open.   I felt like a kid caught with a sugar soda and came crashing back to reality.  I cleared my throat, minimized the screen on my computer, and went rushing downstairs to throw some clean clothes from the dryer onto the bed.  Suddenly I had a sullen look on my face as I started to fold them.  My husband walked in, crazy tired from pruning and mowing and cutting down some cedar and washing off the driveway.  I’m not sure why I felt I needed to hide the karaoke session, except for the fact that I’m a grown woman trying to memorize song lyrics in elastic-wasted yoga pants while he was out there working.

“Whatcha doin?” he asked.

“Oh, just laundry,” I said.  I rolled my eyes like I was bored to death.  I think I sighed a little bit.  Shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

“All afternoon?” he asked.

“Well, you know, that and other stuff.  Boring house stuff.”  Like singing Rolling in the Deep at the top of my lungs.  Dancing.  Eating some leftover Christmas candy.  Putting on lip gloss. Drinking a beer at 3 pm for no apparent reason.

He shrugged as he headed to the shower, probably because the dirty laundry was still piled up high.

When my kids get home, I’ll be thrown back into reality.  We’ll all eat our vegetables and read bedtime stories and change poopy diapers.  But for a moment – just a blip in time – I was young again, with no worries in the world, closing my eyes and getting lost in the music.

Here’s to you, Adele.   You totally rocked my Saturday.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, Music Tagged With: , , ,

lessons in carols

December 30, 2011 By

I love to sing.  I sing in the kitchen and in the car.  I sing as I mop and as I dress.  I dictate instructions to my children in song – sometimes changing the key midstream to see if anyone’s paying attention.  You don’t want me all up-in-your-business singing “you came from my womb, now clean up your room, I’ll fill you with doom if you refuse me,” and don’t think my daughter can’t whip out some do-re-me action on a dime.  That’s hard-core training, people.   I can’t wait until my daughter is in junior high so she can fill up her little journal about how her mother is a total lunatic and is so totally unaware of how annoying she is.  Oh I know, sweetheart.  It’s all part of my master plan of totally family domination.  Breaking down spirits with excessive vibrato.

 

Given my natural affinity for song, however, I was naturally pumped to sing a solo at Christmas eve service. I wore black and had a wonderful pianist and stood in front of my church congregation, candles-a-ready, and began.  I was a bit worried about my lip gloss.  Priorities, you know.  But it all started out fine.  It was calm and serene, and after a moment, people started to smile and close their eyes.  It was a story told long ago, about a child born of Mary. A song of peace and new birth.   About pure hearts and renewed spirits.  A song of –

 

Uh oh.

 

Out of nowhere, I hear a bellowing cry from the back of the church. A man is practically falling over himself to escape from the aisle with a child in his arms.  A child who happens to be my son.  After getting a glimpse of his mother at the front of the church, standing alone with a spotlight on her face, he decides to declare to the people sitting around, and the old-folks home next door, and to the Burger King down the street, that his mother is there. In case they didn’t notice.

 

“Ma MAAAAAAAAA!” he shrieks with delight.  “Hi Mama!  Hi Mama!” He is fervently waving with both hands in the air.  He must think I can’t hear him, although the room is silent except for my voice and you can literally hear fabric rub together when someone crosses their legs.  He bumps the volume up a bit.  “Mamaaa!  Mama SINGGGGG!”  He is thrilled at my existence, even though I just saw him five minutes ago. I can see my husband apologize to someone as he barrels past knees and blazers and candles on his way out the door.

 

I try to remain calm.  If Oleta Adams sang this song in front of thousands, I can surely keep it together as my husband takes my screaming son into the foyer. Where, as it turns out, he sees me again on the video screens and starts with a renewed round of heartfelt hellos and fervent waving.

 

All of a sudden, out of embarrassment or distraction, I lost my place.  I was in the middle of a stanza about finding inner peace when I had a panic attack.  I drew out the note, ran through a mental checklist of oh crap, where’s the coda and I freaking sang that part already and I’m screwed, and my kind accompanist just slowed things down like the whole thing was planned.  I smiled and turned the page, which made no sense since it was the wrong page to begin with.  I’m pretty sure I did some sort of corny hand gesture. Awesome.  My husband will never let me live that one down.

 

I had exactly four beats to make a decision, so I just picked right back up, singing the exact same thing I did before, making up additional words when necessary. My daughter, now parent free, is standing in her beautiful Christmas dress at the back of the church just waving at me.  She is beaming with pride.  She doesn’t know I’m sweating and hoping no one noticed I repeated the entire second verse and praying for the song to end.  It finally did, and I sat down with a solemn heart.  What a waste, I thought.

 

But my family was so proud, and my husband laughed so hard, and when it was all said and done I felt that this is what the Christmas story is all about, anyway.  It’s not calm and morose and black and perfect.  Birth isn’t filled with candles and sweet syrupy lyrics and everyone sitting around in navy blazers.

 

Birth is crying and screaming and pushing and sweating.  It’s seeing a part of God come out in human form in front of you.  Your heart is bursting like a water balloon and you feel surrounded and sustained by pure, unaltered, unabashed joy.  Joy at living.  Joy at this child you created.  Joy at seeing someone you love in front of you, not caring how your reaction looks to the world around you.  Thank God for our son, who reminded me of this. Thank God for Jesus, born screaming out the love of God and not caring who heard it.  And thank God for Mary, who probably thought she was screwing it all up.  But she wasn’t.

And that’s the best lesson of them all.


Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, Music, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

pee is icky

October 19, 2011 By

I was shocked the other day to discover a little boy in front of a children’s toy store zipping up his pants.  He looked straight into my eyes with a devilish grin like he’d gotten away with something.  As it turns out, he had.  A big dripping mass of urine, to be specific.  It was right there in front of me, soaking into the porous bricks of the strip center wall with the overflow sliding down the side.  It took a while to process.  Did that little boy really just pee on the wall?  Right here in public? Surely he was an orphan, with no mother around.  Most certainly he was left alone, abandoned and neglected, having no comprehension that boys of the world are not supposed to whip out their pee machines in public whilst other innocent citizens are shopping for pink baby doll furniture. But he didn’t have clothes like an orphan, all dirty and ripped with a funny little hat and patched knees.  Everyone knows that orphans walk with a limp, carry a cane, and usually speak with a broken English accent, but all I heard out of this little runt was a giggle.

Okay, so maybe he does has a mother.  He’s just a little brat who used immature judgment and decided a wall was a perfectly natural place to pee.  It’s hard for a little tot to distinguish that peeing freely on camping trips and in secluded backyards might be okay but storefronts, well, not so much. When this mother finds out what her little one was up to, I’ll bet she is downright horrified. . .

“Hurry up,” I heard a voice coming from behind.  It was a woman, standing by a car tapping her fingers on the door, waiting.  Who needed to hurry? What was she waiting for?  The little kid ran over to her car and hopped in.  No.  For the love of bacon, no.  This woman was just standing there?  Waiting for her son to urinate on a brick wall in public? I’m curious just how that conversation went, exactly.

“Uh, mom, I totally gotta pee.”

“Well, let’s see,” horrible mom says.  “We are standing in front of a store with public restrooms.  With urinals and running water. But instead of that, why don’t you just hop on out there and pee on the wall. It’s cool.  Just like the last time I told you to pee outside the dry cleaners.  It’s similar to that, but with more people around. Try not to poop, since that might send us to jail or someone might call CPS and there are all those flies to contend with.  But pee’s totally harmless.  It’s just reconstituted soda pop. We’re in a drought.  It’ll dry.”

“What’s reconstituted mean?” the brat says.

“Just go out there and pee already.  We’re late to the movies.”

I just stood there for a few moments, unable to proceed.  I just kept staring at this mother, and back to the store, and over to the huge pee stain.  It was like the air surrounding me was somehow contaminated with this boy’s urine.  All I could think of was Clorox wipes and dirty hands.  The mother looked down, perhaps due to shame.  Perhaps in anger.  Perhaps she thought I was judgmental or inappropriate for giving her dirty looks.  The truth hurts.

I let out a very quiet, barely audible noise – perhaps incomprehensible to some.  Or, if you listened veeeery carefully, it actually sounded something like “Are you serious?  Are you freaking serious?  Did you just let your kid pee on the wall right there?”  Okay, so most people heard it.  But only if you were really paying rapt attention and happened to be in a five-mile radius and were not on your ipad.  It was subtle, really.  I think I really made an impression.

I went home without doll furniture.  But I did walk away with a new appreciation for toilets.  And hand sanitizer. And a realization that maybe I’m not such a bad mother after all.   I might make instant pudding and not realize I can’t set the inside of a crock pot directly onto a stove burner and not notice my child playing with knives, but at least my son won’t pee in public.

Unless he joins a college fraternity.  Then, we’ll just forget this entire conversation.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , ,

Fire!

October 8, 2011 By

Last Tuesday night, I ate bad frozen pizza.  I rocked my son to sleep.  I trimmed my nails and waited for my husband to get home from work.  All fairly normal things folks do on Tuesdays.  Until I heard a bomb go off over our house, consoled our screaming children, saw my husband rushing inside wearing his suit with a look of terror on his face, and noticed huge billowing flames in our back yard.  Then, after three fire trucks, water leaks, and a night spent at Embassy Suites, I can honestly say it wasn’t a normal Tuesday.  We normally have tacos on Tuesdays.  Life was in all kinds of disarray.

With all the fires in Texas lately, I’ve played the “what would I grab if my house was burning down” game plenty.  You map out in your head the route you’d take.  Grab the computer.  Load up the guns.  Great grandma’s clock will probably not make the cut and that’s just life.  All your stuff falls like cards into some sort of loose priority order. Eventually, you just sigh with the realization that life’s not easily replaceable no matter how you slice it, but you have a pretty good idea of what you’d grab.

Until it actually happens.

The minute I saw our back yard ablaze – lightning had struck our house and back shed and all I could see through the kitchen window was one huge ball of fire – I did what any normal person would do in this situation.  I went to the pantry and started stocking my purse with nutri-grain bars.

Instead of remaining calm, I shrieked at my daughter, who was standing right next to me.  “FIRE!,” I wailed.  “PUT ON YOUR SHOES!”  Balancing on son on my hip, I grabbed a bag and with superhuman strength, loaded it up with crackers and squeezable fruit.  I then filled up a sippy cup with water, threw in some diapers, and if I remember correctly, I think I might have actually dug up some underwear.

If the flames reached the house and burned it down, taking with it all our treasures and family heirlooms, don’t you tell me we wouldn’t have plenty of applesauce and underwear to remind us of our past.   Because we so totally would.

I then grabbed the photo albums and threw them all into a box and set them by the door.  I was set.  At least we would have food, water, diapers, photos, and underwear.  Then, with tears on my face and nutri-grain bars in my purse, I left everything sitting neatly inside the house in one neat pile and went rushing out to the neighbors in some sort of anxious frenzy, my daughter running behind me wearing sparkly sandals.

“There’s a fire!” I yelled as I banged on my neighbor’s door.  “Big!  Big fire!”  I had resorted to caveman speech, apparently, and pointed in the direction of our back yard.  Our neighbors, bless their hearts, are nearing sixty, but they ran out toward our back yard like spry sixteen year-olds, the wife jumping the fence in her housecoat to help my husband fight the flames and her husband (recovering from knee surgery) turning on the water. Only then did I notice that my daughter, who was standing beside me, was sobbing uncontrollably and was holding my son’s diaper bag with white knuckles.  “He might need a diaper,” she said amidst the sobs.  I so love her.

Finally, three fire trucks came and I directed them to the back, all the while convincing my daughter that her daddy did not, in fact, perish in the flames.  Only until she saw him, standing there wearing a sweat-soaked dress shirt, did she believe me and stop hyperventilating.

Eventually the flames were extinguished and we went back inside, allowing firemen to stomp through our home in mud-soaked boots, peering in attics and corners and closets for evidence of secret fire pockets.  We eventually calmed down our exhausted kids and thought the drama was over.  Until such time as we discovered our carpet was a subtropical wetland and things were sloshing where in fact there should be no sloshing.  Hmm.  Slab leaks.  Six of them, from the size of the puddles.  My husband rushed to turn off the water, we navigated the automated maze of the insurance 1-800 number, and at some point a company appeared like Batman with fans and dehumidifiers and water damage information (we just nodded and promised never to turn the fans off).  I put the kids to bed on a mat upstairs and was ready to call it a night.

At midnight or so, my husband came in the room and instructed me to find a hotel.  “But the kids are finally asleep,” I moan.  “Can’t we do that tomorrow?”  He looks at me, his face soaked with sweat, still wearing his suit and nice shoes (now ruined).  He throws up his hands, and it hits me that perhaps now is not a good time for this discussion.  The “we’re a team” mentality is really the way to go in this situation, so I nod in agreement with any single thing that comes out of his mouth. Perhaps he’d like to shower. Perhaps he’d like to go someplace that might not burn up.  Perhaps he’d like to talk in a normal tone of voice instead of screaming over large fans that make our living room sound like an airplane hanger.  Yes, yes, yes to everything.

At 1 am, we loaded up our kids and headed downtown to a hotel.  They were thrilled, and my daughter asked if it’s really true that we got pancakes for breakfast. “It’s really true,” I said.  I heard her mutter something about it being wonderful as she nodded off in the car.

So now, a week out, we’ve had six plumbers give us all different ideas of how to completely re-plumb our house.  They all do agree on one thing, which is “this is a pretty big deal” and “don’t expect an easy fix.”

We are living in our second rental, soon to be third come Tuesday, and I think about our week.  The uncertainty and the contractor decisions and the reality that we are homeless gypsies for a while.   But mostly I think about how lucky we are.  Many people aren’t in the situation we’re in with a home to come home to. We have each other.  We have great insurance.  We have a problem that can be fixed.  But most of all, we have nutri-grain bars.

Life is, indeed, very good.

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood, Texas, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

sparkles

September 26, 2011 By

This weekend, we went out of town for a wedding.  Weddings are bright and happy, filled with love and flowers and sparkles.  Or in my case, poop and overflowing toilets, with oozing wounds and gas.

On the day of the wedding, I had to leave a bridal brunch early since my father-in-law, who just had surgery, needed to head back to the doctor to see if his wound was infected.  There’s no way to make that situation less disgusting.  We were all huddled around in the exam room trying to distract ourselves with models of spines and feet bones so we wouldn’t see the surgical tech digging into his shoulder with a long needle trying to get out all the puss.

And finally, after the wedding vows and songs and exchanging of rings, we reached the reception, whereby my son began a tirade of screaming and thrashing in extreme fatigue.   At that, without even a bite of cake and an untouched plate of food sitting on a table somewhere, I began a thirty-minute drive to take my son and husband’s grandmother home.  My son was passed out cold, but she was in a chatty mood, and went into great detail, bless her heart, about the effect of beans on her digestive system.

The next day, it was back to grandma’s for cornbread and a pot of beans (we’ve covered that! I know the full effects!) and after hours of sitting around in an extremely hot house, it was my son’s nap time.  But the moment I laid him down, I heard a strange rushing-water sound coming from the restroom.  I went to investigate and discovered a bubbling witch’s brew of urine-laden water overflowing from the toilet basin and pouring onto the tile floor.  I screamed as my drugged father-in-law stumbled in like he was woken from the dead.   I told him I needed a plunger.  Like, immediately.  Perhaps some Pine-Sol?  He headed for the garage (what? why is this essential item in the garage?) while I tried sop up the water with towels and bathmats.

The day actually got slightly better when I did my mother-in-law’s laundry.  That should tell you something.

On the seven-hour drive home, the kids did great.  No poopy diapers in the car and no major breakdowns.  But Sunday night, after an exhausting weekend, I looked down after getting my son out of the high chair and saw brown things on the carpet.  It was, in fact, poop.  Literally dangling from his shorts and dropping to the floor below in small little clumps.  I rushed him into the bedroom to change his diaper, whereby he immediately stuck his hands directly into his filthy, half-exposed diaper, squished his fingers around in the contents before I could stop him, and then stared at his crap-covered hands in wonder.  I later had to go around the house like it was an Easter Egg Hunt trying to find poop droplets.  I ended up on my knees scrubbing the kitchen floor until my hands stung from the bleach water.

All in all, a really fabulous weekend.  I love weddings.  Peace and joy and sparkles, after all.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , ,

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