Pardon the Egg Salad

The breath is the fire

2012-01-29T22:03:00.001-06:00

The breath is the fire

As an adult I have grown out of most of the once-overt symptoms of my ADHD, just as my teen-years specialist predicted I would. I stopped taking Concerta when we started trying to conceive Nico and very luckily never needed to resume treatment. One thing I still have, something I definitely view as an asset, is an immense capacity for multitasking. At home and especially at work, I can bounce easily from project to project, holding several threads at all times. When I'm at my best it's exhilarating, and I skate along the knife's edge gleefully juggling chainsaws and machetes and live chickens. Even at rest, my brain kind of whirs along. It has always amazed me that I can ask MB as we're going to sleep, "What are you thinking about?" and he can honestly answer, "Nothing." I'm never not thinking about something, or several somethings, and it's always been this way.

I remember once when I was about eight years old, my dad set up our tent in the backyard and we had a practice camp-out. With the excitement of the adventure, I couldn't sleep. I told my dad I didn't know how to fall asleep and he advised me to just lie still and not think about anything. It was a mystifying concept. Not think of anything? I'd never done it. I tried and tried and can still recall one perfect moment of utter blankness, which startled me so much that I immediately started thinking about it. The closest I can usually get to not thinking is to think "Don't think! Stop thinking!" which is about as relaxing as you'd imagine.

Other than when I'm asleep - when I'm usually busy having vivid action-movie-style dreams - my best bet for finding moments of quiet and inner peace is to go to yoga class. I've been practicing yoga off and on since college, and I keep going back to it. Part of it is that my body just seems to really like yoga - I'm strong and flexible in the ways that work for yoga, and I like the calm of it. I did a weekly yoga class during my entire pregnancy with Nico and it was often a challenge to focus and not sit in a pose going over my grocery list or what we still needed to do for the baby's room. I went back for six months or so after Nico was born, but ended up dropping yoga in favor of cardio boot camp in the interest of getting the most bang for my once-a-week gym visit buck.

And then, almost exactly a year ago, a new-ish power yoga studio about three minutes from my house had a week of free classes and I went to one. It was my first real experience with Ashtanga yoga and it was one of those cliche-inspiring big-life-moment things, literally the best yoga class I'd ever been to in my life. I worked my ass off and sweated buckets and my body detoxed so hard that I felt like I had a hangover the next morning (to the point of waking up craving a breakfast egg biscuit and sucking down Advil and water all day). I felt awful and it was awesome. I went back two nights later and did it again. This yoga, it's work. I'm so busy just keeping up and keeping track of what we're doing that I don't think about anything for an hour and fifteen minutes, nothing but the breath and the flow and probably how bad my quads hurt. I love the practice and I love the people just as much. There are a few skinny girls with tiny boobs and pert yoga butts, but there are also girls my age with post-baby bellies and middle-aged men with soft middles. The owner and main instructor is one of the most kind and cheerful people I've met, but never in an annoying way. There's not a lot of chit-chat before class, but there's something great about fighting through some never-ending Warrior series and having the entire class let out a burst of relieved laughter along with you when the instructor finally says, "And…down to high plank."

One of my New Year's resolutions is to make it to Saturday yoga classes as often as possible now that I don't have to work every weekend. I went yesterday for the intermediate / advanced class and had my ass handed to me by a tiny, intense guest instructor. At the beginning she asked us to set an intention for our practice and I picked "peace," hoping I'd be able to let the hamster off the wheel and just be present in the moment. Then I was too busy sweating and trying to keep up with her to think about anything else. The thinking fired up again at the end, as I lay in corpse pose failing to be quietly at rest. And then, as if she could see me thinking, the instructor leaned over and adjusted my shoulders, repositioned my head, massaged my temples, and tapped me lightly in between the eyes with her finger before gliding off to fix someone else. We're all a work in progress, it seems.

Reading: I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet

Playing: a mix I made for a friend years ago

2012-01-27T08:27:00.000-06:00

Photo Friday

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Weekend of win

2012-01-24T22:47:00.002-06:00

Weekend of win

We had a weekend of actually being social, which we don't do often enough. Nico and I were invited to the children's museum by one of our playdate mom / kid pairs. It was a good trip, though I had a really hard time tearing Nico away from the rice bin and its assorted toy front loaders. Next time I might make him go through the rest of the exhibits first, but it's going to be difficult since he remembers the rice bin is there. I did, after two aborted attempts, get him to play in the water room with the other toddler for about half an hour. I felt kind of like a jerk before that because they'd invited us and given us guest passes, and then Nico didn't want to run around with his buddy, he just wanted to scoop rice, all day long. I try to let him direct his own experiences as much as possible in these kind of situations but come on, kid…don't be rude!

I recently reconnected with a once-close college friend via facebook. He and I had coffee a couple of weeks later, then MB and Nico and I met him for dinner one night, and then two Wednesdays in a row he went to a wine tasting with MB and hung out at our house afterward for games of Settlers of Catan. This past Saturday his fiancé was in town, so they both came over for dinner and assorted…social games? Blokus, Boxers or Briefs, and Mexican Train dominoes. What do you call those? They're not board games, but just "games" sounds kind of suggestive. Party games is kind of shady, too, plus it implies more people than four. Table games, maybe? It was a lot of fun and we're already looking forward to the next time we can get together.

Sunday was low key - some errands by myself and then lots of football. On Monday, Nico's library story time started back up after the winter break, so we went to that and then had a playdate with a different mom / kid pair. The last time we went to their house, Nico cried on my lap for twenty minutes before he'd even look at the other kids, but this time he was cheery and friendly from the minute we arrived. He played nicely with the other kid's toys, ate his lunch with gusto, and even helped me pick up before we left. Socialization success! And then this happened about three minutes after we departed:

Hee!

Overall, it was a pretty kickass weekend.

Reading: (just finished) How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage by Sascha Rothchild

Playing: this NPR tiny desk concert, over and over:

(the second track is my favorite)

2012-01-20T22:47:00.002-06:00

Photo Friday

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Multimedia

2012-01-17T22:57:00.003-06:00

Multimedia

Read

I finished my first book of the year last night, the enjoyable Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick. In the previous two books (especially the second) I often found protagonist Nora gratingly shrill and stereotypically teenage-temper-tantrummy, but she was MUCH better in this one. Cliffhanger ending, though, just like the second book. Be warned.

Did I ever tell you about my favorite book from last year? I don't think I did. It was The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. She wrote the Mercy Falls werewolves trilogy (Shiver, etc) which I liked quite a lot until I read The Scorpio Races. Maybe this is stupid to say about an author I totally don't know personally, but I feel like this was the book she was meant to write. The wolf books are entertaining - I really liked the first one, thought the second was so-so, and then liked the third one enough that it made me want to go back and start over - but this one, my God. It's wonderful. Highly, highly recommend. After reading the library's copy, I bought it in hardcover for myself which I never, ever do and then got it for my sister for Christmas.

Watch

I've ripped through the first disc of Daria from Netflix and have almost finished the second. I'm pleased to report that it does stand the test of time quite well. I'm enjoying it very much even as a more or less fully-fledged adult. I'm also watching bunches of football playoff games…am I the only one? Possibly.

Play

My new boss and I have heavily overlapping musical tastes and usually at least once a week he starts rocking out to something semi-obscure that I've loved forever on his computer and I turn around in my chair and exclaim, "Is that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club / the Cowboy Junkies / Regina Spektor?" Last week he called me over to his desk to play this for me, and I have been YouTubing the SHIT out of this chick (Trixie Whitley) ever since. Please listen, I don't think you'll be disappointed:

Reading: Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed by Carl Zimmer

Playing: an old mix I found while cleaning

2012-01-15T22:14:00.001-06:00

Two

Dear Nico,

Today, Little Son, you are two. You are a beam of light, a ball of energy, a little piece of amazing. I never knew that I could love so much, that the love I felt for you yesterday, last week, a month ago, a year ago, it was all just the beginning.

Things I want to remember about you on the day you turn two:

You have a delicious, rich giggle.
You have the brightest eyes.
You have a sweet, tiny voice.
You have the softest curls.
You still have one tiny set of chub rolls left on your thighs and a round tummy.
You are a good kid, almost all the time.

You're big and healthy and bright, and I hope fervently every day that I can always say these things. Today is a day to brag, so let me indulge. You know your alphabet, both capitals and lowercase. You can count to ten and identify all the digits 1 - 10. You know all your colors and just about every shape, even the impressive ones like crescent and semicircle and trapezoid. You've started to learn the letters that words begin with, and can proudly tell me that "daddy" starts with D and "mama" starts with M. Your language skills have exploded over the last two months, both in enunciation and vocabulary.

You can play a 2 x 4 spread of Memory on the iPhone. You're getting better at sharing and playing with other kids. You almost always say "please" and we're working on "thank you" and "excuse me." Your favorite toys are trucks, but you're also starting to get into blocks. You love books, which is fabulous. Through you, with you, I'm learning to see the world all over again. And little dude, it is awesome. You are awesome. Happy, happy birthday.

Love,
Mama

2012-01-13T06:29:00.000-06:00

Photo Friday

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2012-01-11T23:39:00.011-06:00

Year of Decluttering II

Last February I posted about my quest to declutter my entire house. I updated the list sporadically through the year and decided tonight to repost the updated version with the hope that seeing it more often will keep me motivated to continue Cleaning All the Things*. I guess my list probably doesn't look all that impressive, but I can already see a vast difference in the house and in my mindset about my belongings. Things still go through the typical cycle of getting gradually cluttered-up and then cleaned up, but overall there is so much less stuff in our living space and it's awesome. The more I get rid of, the more I want to get rid of, which is quite useful.

As before, throwing out includes throwing away, giving away, donating to Goodwill, or selling, so most of the stuff on my list will (hopefully) not be stuff that went to the dump.

Throw Out All the Things
1. a big bag of non-preferred plastic food storage containers
2. four reusable water bottles
3. the old gas stove in the basement
4. non-Vista-compatible flatbed scanner
5. the remainder of Nico's powdered baby formula
6. all the expired food that was collecting dust (and guilt) in the pantry
7. let National Geographic subscription expire (I'm counting this since for years I got the magazine but never made time to read it.)
8. ~~seven~~ eight boxes of stuff to consignment shop
9. leaky exercise ball that I never used because it was always half flat
10. 90% of the empty boxes from the shelves in the furnace room
11. outdoor trash can full of crap from shed
12. bag of cat-hair-covered curtains from our last apartment + raggedy old throw blanket
13. three boxes to Goodwill
14. one box of items posted on freecycle
15. worm composting bin cleaned out and loaned to my workplace
16. five (!) boxes of books donated to a fundraiser sale for the dog rescue that saved Indy
17. six boxes of stuff + a spare crock pot, dust buster, and rocking chair sold in a yard sale / packed up for consignment / donated to Goodwill / freecycled
18. set of extra (crappy) hand weights
19. garbage bag full of bubble wrap and packing peanuts
20. cool but space-hogging never-used owl mug tree set consigned
21. five pairs of too-small / raggedy jeans Goodwilled
22. kitty litter box freecycled
23. basket of expired baking chips thrown out (sadness!)
24. two shopping bags full of lotions, soaps, and other pamper-y stuff donated to women's shelter
25. whole bunch of old earrings passed on to mom and sister
26. four cool (but stored under the bed since JUNE 2004 WTF) Japanese panels consigned
27. two old TVs freecycled
28. giant box of borrowed maternity clothes returned to friend
29. ~~two~~ three boxes of non-preferred kid clothes sold on Craigslist

Organize All the Things
1. Nico's bitty baby clothes sorted by size into plastic tubs and carried up to the attic
2. outgrown Nico jackets, bitty baby items / toys, and bitty baby bedding / swaddlers sorted into plastic tubs
3. currently-too-big Nico hand-me-downs sorted by size into boxes and stacked in the closet
4. outgrown Nico baby gear Tetrised into guest room closet
5. quote obtained for list of small home repair items we can't complete ourselves
6. breast pump and accessories washed and packed away
7. small home repairs done!
8. shed cleared out and organized
9. last of yard sale remnants sorted into three boxes for consignment and one (small!) one to keep
10. one box from bedroom pile sorted and put away
11. hand weights moved into a basket on the entertainment center instead of lying on the floor and serving as dog hair traps
12. breakfast nook / mudroom organized and top of dog crate cleared
13. whole bookcase of college books and notes carried down to new storage cabinets in the basement

14. basement decluttered!
15. gift wrapping supplies sorted and moved from guest room to basement

How many gift bags does one family need? Probably not this many.

16. two shelves on living room bookcase cleared / consolidated to make space for Nico things

17. buffet storage decluttered and reorganized
18. space cleared on top of bookcase for Nico's library books
19. bathroom cabinets purged of all unused and unneeded items
20. ~~one~~ three boxes emptied and removed from Box Mountain
21. all my pre-baby clothes removed from guest room closet and stored neatly in my own
22. guest room bookcase cleared of non-kid stuff
23. two of three bookcases in master bedroom decluttered & reorganized...now that they've been cleared of the useless hoardy crap, I have an ENTIRE shelf empty for more books!
24. After two years and 14 days, I finally framed Nico's hospital photo and newborn footprints. Hopefully it won't be another two years before I hang them on the wall. (Though he shouldn't feel too neglected. I've been married for seven years and still haven't framed a single wedding photo.)

Decluttering & Organizing Goals for 2012
1. clear out guest room
2. finish clearing box ~~stack~~ mountain in master bedroom
~~3. clean out dining room buffet storage~~
~~4. reorganize game collection and pare down if needed~~
5. solve living room lighting problem
6. reorganize / optimize linen cabinet
7. reorganize / optimize / pare down craft supply closet
8. move all important papers to basement filing cabinet
9. buy a new shredder and take care of stacks of to-shred papers
10. hang caterpillar quilt in Nico's room
11. pare down office supplies and stationery and move to basement
12. hang diplomas, family photos, art, etc.

2012 Consignment & Craigslist Profit: $69

2012-01-09T17:08:00.003-06:00

Following Directions

I have to tell you this Nico story because he has this thing he does, and it kills me with cute every. damn. time. Maybe a month before Christmas, I took a quick spin through Goodwill and bought him a half-size farm-themed See 'n Say for the grand price of one dollar.

Nico knew how it was supposed to work, having one at Grandma's house, but he was completely unable to actually operate it. There were many incidents of rapidly escalating hand-flaps and whining as the toy repeatedly failed to play "The Farmer in the Dell" when told to do so by Nico's fearsome mind powers.

MB coached him with eternal, kind patience. He must've told our child, "Move the arrow so it points to the song, then pull the handle" at least a hundred times. Nico soon was doing exactly what he thought his father suggested -- moving the arrow at random, pointing emphatically to the musical notes sticker with his finger, and pulling the handle -- then getting really pissed when it still didn't work. We realized the problem because he narrates his life constantly and was saying, "Move arrow, point song" each time. So of course he was furious that it didn't work...he was following directions, dammit!

Even now, when he seems to have figured it out, he'll move the arrow to point to the musical notes, stab at the notes forcefully with his finger a few times, and then pull the handle. Every time. And it slays me, every time.

2012-01-07T00:59:00.002-06:00

Our hill to die on

MB: Did you see that email I sent you about the Oxford comma?

vbg: No, I haven't opened it yet.

MB: I need to state for the record that I am in favor of the Oxford comma.

vbg: Good. Then I don't have to disown you.

MB: Just to clarify, I'm talking about the comma that directly precedes "and."

vbg: Yes, the comma that is required to be there.

MB: See? We're meant for each other.

2012-01-06T21:59:00.002-06:00

Photo Friday

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2012-01-05T22:59:00.001-06:00

Oh, look, it's January 5

Bullet points!

>> We spent New Year's Eve day / night and part of New Year's Day in MB's homeland visiting his extended family. I love these people, you guys. Love them. We had early (amaaaaaaazing) country supper at his grandparents' house on Saturday, then spent the night at MB's aunt and uncle's house, which is my favorite place to stay down there. They're fantastically laid back and hospitable and they just adore Nico. On Sunday Nico got to pet horses and twelve-day-old Rottweiler puppies out in the barn. Then MB's uncle took us to the local volunteer fire department. Nico got to sit in two of the trucks and honk the horn. Best New Year's Day ever? Quite possibly.

>> On Tuesday we had a few friends over for a low-key hang out / play games thing, which was also very nice. I'm so glad we got to see our out-of-town friend Norah 3 times this visit…I miss hanging out with her.

>> Last night I shuffled some stuff around on our bookcases to make room for a few of Nico's new toys, including his little train set my parents bought him for Christmas. He'd been excited about it before but hadn't played with it once since I stowed it neatly in its storage tub under his train table in the playroom. Suspecting an out of sight / out of mind situation, I hoped he'd play with it more if he actually saw it every day. (Plus his train table is currently occupied by this marvel of toy engineering, which he received from BoMB and Nie as an early birthday gift.) Wouldn't you know, it worked like a charm. About 30 minutes after I moved the train set out, he pulled it down from the shelf and he and MB played with it.

>> I found out a few weeks ago that Daria is available through Netflix, so I put the DVDs at the front of our queue and the first one arrived today. I'm eagerly anticipating watching it and also hoping it doesn't turn out to be one of those once-beloved shows that is totally stupid when viewed as an adult (*coughSmurfscough*)

>> I made a quick list of decluttering / organizing goals today, so here they are. Hold me accountable, random blog entry!

1. clear out guest room
2. finish clearing box stack in master bedroom
3. clean out dining room buffet storage
4. evaluate game collection and pare down if needed
5. solve living room lighting problem
6. reorganize / optimize linen cabinet
7. reorganize / optimize / pare down craft supply closet
8. move all important papers to basement filing cabinet
9. buy a new shredder and take care of stacks of to-shred papers
10. hang caterpillar quilt in Nico's room

Reading: Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Playing: Decemberists, Mumford & Sons

2011-12-30T23:59:00.000-06:00

Dead Reckoning

Originating with Linda at All & Sundry.

Here are mine from years past:
2006 / 2007 / 2008 / 2009 / 2010

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before? I went to a drag show. It was awesome.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?  Last year, I said: "I want 2011 to be the year of the Great Decluttering, in my house, my professional life, and maybe my personal life, too." I got really close to completing the decluttering project, as documented here. I'm down to a big stack of boxes in the master bedroom and some stuff in the guest room that needs to be moved to permanent storage somewhere else.

My goals for 2011 are (1) finish the Great Decluttering (2) maintain the cleaning that has already been achieved and (3) get back into a regular yoga practice.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?  / 4. Did anyone close to you die?  Unfortunately these two go together this year. A friend of ours was in a serious car accident in March at 37 weeks pregnant and the baby didn't make it. For a while it looked touch and go for our friend, too, but she recovered. She's now pregnant and due in March again with a second baby girl, but is having some problems. If you're the praying type maybe send one up for them. I cannot even imagine facing that once, let alone twice.

5. What countries did you visit? none

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011? an actual vacation

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Nothing's coming to mind. It was a good year, but there were no big standout events.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?  I'm happy to say I nursed Nico until he was 21 1/2 months old. For us, it was a huge achievement and something I'll never take for granted.

9. What was your biggest failure? I kind of wish I'd quit my old job sooner than I did rather than putting up with the bullshit for so long, but I guess it doesn't matter overall since I did quit.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I dislocated a rib while lifting a gallon of milk back in March. Lamest ever, right?

11. What was the best thing you bought? It's a tie between my iPhone 4S and my MacBook, I think.

12. Where did most of your money go? mortgage, paying down debt

13. What did you get really excited about? my new job

14. What song will always remind you of 2011? This is lame, but I can't think of anything that was new this year. I guess I gained an appreciation for Lady Gaga, but I doubt I'll remember that as an iconic experience of 2011.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you: 
– happier or sadder? happier
– thinner or fatter? thinner, hallelujah! I'm still overweight but am now at 6 pounds under what I weighed when I got pregnant with Nico.
– richer or poorer? a little richer thanks to MB busting his tail at work

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?  I wish I'd made more time for writing. My friends will laugh, but I also wish I'd taken more photos this year.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?  I've slipped into a bad habit of staying up way too late fiddling around online. That needs to stop.

18. How did you spend Christmas? We had Christmas Eve dinner with my mom's extended family, and then spent Christmas Day with my parents and sister at their house. MB's mom joined us for the weekend, too, which was nice.

19. What was your favorite TV program? We canceled our cable last December and I only bought iTunes season passes for Deadliest Catch and Project Runway. Neither of them really blew my skirt up this year.

20. What were your favorite books of the year?The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

  21. What was your favorite music from this year? some old favorites have been in heavy rotation all year - the Decemberists, Mumford & Sons, Kings of Leon

22. What were your favorite films of the year? RED, Easy A

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? As is typical, I had friends over for cake and games. I turned 30 without angst or fanfare.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? It would have been really fun to stick it to my ex employer, but I chose to take the high road and not burn any bridges. I'm sure it was the right thing to do, if a bit dull.

26. What kept you sane? Writing, music, friends, and above all my boys.

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011. Sometimes what seems like a horrible bit of luck can turn out to be a blessing.

2011-12-28T21:59:00.004-06:00

How I became a Bambi killer

I've been an apologetic omnivore for years - I eat meat, but I always feel vaguely guilty about it. I think the bottom line is that I'm too lazy and too picky to go vegetarian. If I could know that all the animals we eat were raised and killed humanely, I wouldn't have much guilt at all. Yes, they're all cute(ish) and they all have faces and had mothers, but dammit, we evolved to eat their delicious asses. Okay, that didn't sound right. Anyway, I eat meat and feed meat to my kid and try not to think about the specifics of how it got to my table.

One of my new coworkers fishes and hunts regularly, not just as an occasional weekend thing. As a slightly pretentious eco-conscious environmentally crusadery college student, I would've been horrified. Guns! Killing animals! The horror! But as a much more mellow adult, more power. I honestly have no problem with hunting and then feeding your family with the prey. To each his own, right? When autumn rolled around I found out that once said coworker gets enough deer in the freezer for his family, he'll take requests to be put on the deer waiting list. I had no intention of putting myself on the list, but then our boss pretty much said, "Oh, have you tried venison? You have to get on the list. You're on the list!" and told the hunter to put me on the list. I sheepishly told MB that we were apparently on the hook for a hundred bucks of deer processing, and was surprised when he did a victory dance right on the spot. It seems a coworker of his has been bringing in venison summer sausage to share and MB is a fan.

I had some doubts about actually being able to eat a deer. They're so cute and frolicsome! They're harmless spindly-legged vegetarians! They have big soulful eyes and big soft ears! But sometimes you have to try new things, right? And as another coworker pointed out, you can't get more free range or organic than an animal that lives its life in the wild, doing what it was meant to do. That deer is a deer until the second the hunter takes it. It doesn't get herded through feed lots or run through a slaughterhouse or penned or abused. If the hunter is conscientious, it's a deer one minute and dinner the next. So I left my name on the list and three days later, I got the call and we had a deer. I had to go with my dad to pick it up and take it to the butcher, and it was a bit visceral to come literally face to face with the animal that would be our food.

When we ate the first steaks from that deer tonight, I did pause for a moment and remember what it looked like before, what it was before. I wondered if I'd actually be able to go through with eating it. I have a hard time facing large portions of impersonal pieces of meat, after all. It's the funniest thing, though -- knowing what I know, seeing what I've seen, understanding the balance at play -- for the first time in my life, I met my dinner and was able to eat it without guilt.

Reading: Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed (which I totally recommend!)

Playing: Yuletide Beat and Tis the Season for Los Straitjackets by Los Straitjackets

2011-12-25T23:58:00.000-06:00

Merry, merry

Nico doing the new fire truck dance. I hope your day was full of small moments of joy.

2011-12-23T23:57:00.001-06:00

Photo Friday

Turns out my Christmas spirit was packed up with the wrapping paper, because as soon as I started wrapping gifts, there it was. Merry Christmas Eve-Eve, everyone, and best wishes for a wonderful weekend.

2011-12-21T22:50:00.000-06:00

Panic! Panic!

I have no idea why the holiday has caught me so unprepared this year, but I simply CANNOT keep hold of the fact that Christmas is this weekend. It literally keeps slipping my mind until something pops up to remind me, and then I get all spazzy and short circuit for a minute. Earlier I noticed a facebook post from the yoga studio where I signed up a few weeks back for a candlelight yoga class they have going tomorrow night and went "Oh, shit, that's TOMORROW? HOW IS IT DECEMBER 22ND ALREADY TOMORROW? HOW?"

I pretty much have all our gifts bought (not wrapped) and the cards are addressed, stamped, and ready to go (other than the prints of our Christmas photos, which have yet to arrive). I don't have much baking to do and we only have one gathering to attend each day of the weekend. And yet, the panic!

I will say this - if you have the time and the right people to invite, I fully recommend having friends over to watch old Christmas specials and eat snacks. We did that last night and it was awesome. Really, seriously great. I wish I could take credit for the idea but we were just the hosts.

Okay, move along. Nothing to see here, folks. I'll just be over here, rocking back and forth and humming.

2011-12-19T21:34:00.003-06:00

Four

Oh, Indy. Dear, sweet Indy. Today you are four. Despite all my best intentions, your life has changed a lot since Nico came into it. Daily walks are a thing of the past and your training has somewhat fallen by the wayside. I never resented you or found you grating on my nerves like some people warned me I would after adding a baby, but over Nico's first year I admit I just didn't have a lot of space left at the end of the day for you, attention-wise or emotion-wise. I never stopped loving you, but you definitely slipped into my periphery a little bit. Now that Nico is nearly two and caring for him is becoming less all-consuming, I find that I am appreciating you all over again.

I appreciate your steadfastness, your calm, your huge heart. I appreciate that after two years of mostly letting you be, you'll still sit when told and stay when asked. Maybe you do beg at the table more than I'd prefer now that there's a steady source of fallen Goldfish crackers and bits of pasta, but you don't try to steal food from Nico's hands or tray. We try to make sure you have your own space and safe places to lie down, but when Nico does manage to get his hands on you, you've been admirably patient. Usually you just look up at me with big long-suffering eyes as he enthusiastically pats you on the back or grabs your tail. Even the day he clocked you square in the nose with a truck in his excitement to say hello, you just yelped and looked up at me as if to say A little help, here?

In a perfect life, we'd reinstate those daily walks and weekly training sessions, but in reality, we have a toddler. Things are not going to get any less hectic. I promise, though, to take you out when I can, to take the time to give you a scratch on the head, to appreciate your steady and undemanding company. You'll always be the dog who turned me into a dog person, the dog of my heart. Thank you for being you, and happy birthday. Here's to many, many more.

2011-12-16T23:10:00.001-06:00

Photo Friday

View the entire Photo Friday collection on Flickr.

2011-12-15T23:59:00.000-06:00

Quite possibly the most horrifying book cover of all time

2011-12-12T23:05:00.008-06:00

This post is useless without pics

I'm still running around busy and panicking about Christmas, so here are some photos:

We had Nico's Christmas pictures taken on Sunday, and I think this one is my favorite. Some strange combination of camera settings and lighting just blew the color of his hair completely out, and combined with that sneaky little smile…love it. If he didn't have his hand in front of his face, I'd probably use this for our Christmas cards.

My goofy kid at lunch today. I swear, I do comb his hair. Perhaps he does need an intervention.

Nico and the Eyebrows of Deep Concern, featured with the wonderful Santa who tours the local libraries every year. I'm happy Nico isn't screaming his fool head off, and also that we managed to get a good picture of him on my lap sitting beside Santa after this.

pretties received as part of the Jett Superior Ornament Exchange (and please go read this for a laugh)

The most aesthetically perfect cheesecake I've ever produced, baked for MB's birthday. It made me a little sad to cut it.

Reading: The Big Year by Mark Obmascik

Playing: Christmas music, mostly

2011-12-09T07:10:00.000-06:00

Photo Friday

View the entire Photo Friday collection on Flickr.

2011-12-08T21:52:00.001-06:00

T minus 17

Did you guys know there's only 17 days left until Christmas? Apparently I just realized this fact on Sunday or so, for I have spent the week alternately contemplating, planning for, and panicking about Christmas. I have all of Nico's gifts bought (at least until I find something else I can't resist buying for him) and need just one more thing for MB's birthday (which is Tuesday). Other than that, I think I have three Christmas gifts crossed off my shopping list. Threeeeeehelp.

I'm taking next Thursday off for delivery of a chest freezer we bought online during a Black Friday sale and to hopefully do the rest of the Christmas shopping. Pray for me, I guess.

Our tree is up, but not any of the other decorations I usually get out for the holidays. I keep meaning to get to it and then not.

I have to get off the computer in about two minutes to finish up my ornaments for Jett Superior's exchange because I didn't remember to start those until Monday night.

We took Nico on a carriage ride through the big town park tonight, where they have these big fancy holiday light displays set up. I think he really liked it, even though he was definitely in Serious Consideration mode. He was so tired afterward that when I took him up to his room to get ready for bed, he stretched out on the floor with his head pillowed on his blankie and said "Nighty night, little boy" while I was changing his crib sheet.

Okay, this has turned out lame and disjointed but at least you know I'm not dead. Now I shall go off and finish my ornaments.

Reading: Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich

Playing: Christmas music, of course

2011-12-03T23:35:00.010-06:00

Saturday! Celebrate!

I unexpectedly had today off and MB unexpectedly had to work, so Nico and I found some ways to pass the time.

in his new dinosaur pjs…size 3TOMG

at Barnes & Noble after Nico saw the big sprinkle-covered sugar cookies in the cafe case and said, "Coo-key, peez? Coo-key, peeeeez?"

It was 58 degrees by the afternoon, so we went for a walk in the woods, as one does.

"Tree up high!"

playing in the bubble rock fountain outside the nature center

In the evening MB and Nico hung out while I got groceries and ran some errands. Because we're going to see all of Nico's little playdate buddies this week, I got my Martha on and put together some holiday treat bags after I got home.

I was hoping Nico would color on the paper so I could use it to make tags for the bags…he was decidedly disinterested.

I was tempted to just sit at the table huffing Play Doh and Crayola fumes all night, I'll admit it.

I realized after the fact that I could've just bought each kid a board book for what I spent on these, but at least they turned out really cute.

2011-12-02T01:41:00.001-06:00

Friday Fiction #5

part one
part two
part three

Though he enjoyed hunting on his own, Dominic hated the first week of firearm season for deer. The woods were always crowded with men and teenaged boys, many of them with more enthusiasm than experience. Getting shot by a jackass with jumpy nerves was no way to die, so he ended up staying off the trails for most of opening weekend, restless and worried. A couple of local conservation officers checked licenses on the way in and tags on the way out, so unless he wanted to take his chances hunting in an already-packed field, there wasn't much to do. This year, though, his luck was good. Two days before the season opened, he got a call from his old college roommate with an invitation to spend a long weekend bowhunting on private land in the Upper Peninsula.

Abby was in the wind, having given no word on when she'd be back. The past few months had taught him she might be gone for a few days or nearly a week. She rarely called before skipping town; usually he just didn't hear from her and that's how he knew she'd taken off again. Since she also tended to show up again without calling first, he sent her a text message to let her know he'd be gone for a few days and left the spare key under the loose board at the bottom of the porch steps. It turned out to be a nearly perfect weekend, the weather chilly but clear, the hunting good. He and four other guys spent three nights under a limitless sky, drinking beer and playing cards by campfire light, miles from the nearest road. Even though she maintained she had no interest in hunting, he couldn't help but think that Abby would love this place and its acres and acres of quiet. He was looking forward to telling her about the wolves he'd heard singing every night. He'd seen increasing signs of wolf activity around the cabin all through the summer and into the fall, but he'd never heard a pack howling.

He drove back on Tuesday, arriving home in the late afternoon. Abby hadn't replied to his text message and her car wasn't parked out front, so he drove around to the small outbuilding behind the cabin to unload his share of the weekend's deer meat into the freezer. Once that was done and the truck bed was hosed out, he got his pack and bow from the cab and let himself in through the back door. After stowing the bow, he built up a fire in the wood stove to warm the chilly air inside the cabin and headed out to retrieve the spare key. His steps slowed as he noticed drops of blood on the boards of the porch, a trail leading from the steps to the front door and then doubling back to the steps. He followed the trail, fingered a tuft of fur caught in a rough spot on the boards at the porch edge. Something had crawled underneath to hide, maybe to die. A dog, he thought, or a coyote. He moved cautiously to crouch beside the porch steps and peer into the dim space behind them. As his eyes adjusted to the poor light, he swore in surprise. A woman lay curled in the crawl space, naked and streaked with dirt.

"Hey," he called out, stripping off his bulky jacket. "Hey, are you all right?" He knew it would be a tight squeeze, but he dropped to his belly and wriggled through the gap between the steps and the foundation. His body was blocking most of the light from the entrance, but he suddenly recognized the tangle of blonde hair in front of him. "Abby?" He scrambled forward, ignoring the scrapes and bruises the porch floor was laying along his back as he moved too quickly to be careful. "Jesus…Abby!" She was breathing but unconscious, cold to the touch. It took a painful eternity to move her out into the daylight, trying not to drag her too roughly across the ground but lacking the clearance needed to lift her. He felt like he was back on the ice again, inching toward the wolf, his pulse a steady drumbeat of fear.

He finally made it into the yard and pulled her carefully out, his heart lurching in his chest as he saw blood smeared along her thighs and belly from a ragged wound across the meat of her right hip. Scooping her into his arms, he rushed into the house. He hurried to the bathroom and laid her as gently as he could in the tub, then opened the taps to fill the bath with hot water. Abby had never been shy about her body, but it felt wrong to see her naked this way, without her knowing. He spread a towel across her and did his best to only look where it was needed to clean her skin and check her for injuries. With the blood washed away, he was left with only the shallow gash across her hip, ugly but not severe. The bleeding had mostly stopped already, so he drained the water from the bath, wrapped her in towels, and carried her to the couch. He bandaged her wound as best he could, then stoked the fire in the wood stove to burn high and hot, hoping to drive the last of the chill from her.

Once he was sure she was resting comfortably, he slipped back outside. His thoughts were a tangle, anger threatening to choke him. Someone, something had hurt Abby and left her to bleed in the cold. He paced the dirt of the yard in widening arcs, but no matter how far he circled out from the house, he found only the tracks of a solitary wolf interspersed with traces of blood. There was no sign of the girl's passing, no prints from her bare feet or snagged strands of hair. It was as if the wolf had chased a phantom out of the forest. As the daylight started to fail, he retreated to the house and brewed a strong pot of coffee, then sat down at the table and drank it, staring out the kitchen window as he turned everything over in his head. Abby’s injury didn't look like a bite. It seemed crazy to admit it, but the thing looked like a bullet graze. How had she made it to the cabin with no clothes, no shoes, no car? He sipped more coffee, his gaze miles away. His thoughts drifted again to the wolf he'd pulled from the lake, the way he'd felt on the trail the day he'd met Abby, her odd disappearances. The problem wasn't so much that things weren't adding up, it was more that they were but the sum made absolutely no sense.

She came to slowly, surrounded by Dominic's familiar smell. It was as strong as if she lay in his arms, but she could tell she was alone. She opened her eyes and found she was tucked snugly into his bed in the cabin's sleeping loft, three quilts piled on top of her and soft pillows beneath her head. Lifting the covers a little to peer below, she saw that she was dressed in too-large plaid flannel pajama pants and a University of Michigan sweatshirt. As she moved to push the blankets aside and sit up, pain knifed across her right hip and wrenched a cry from her throat. She fell back against the pillows, whimpering a bit as footfalls rushed up the staircase toward her. Dominic appeared at the top of the steps, his face lined with worry.

"Are you all right?" he asked, stopping and gripping the footboard with both hands, his knuckles whitening.

"I'm fine, I just moved too fast."

"What happened to you, Abby?"

"I don't…" she faltered and closed her eyes, trying to call up anything she could remember. Wolf thoughts were different from human thoughts, wolf senses sharper and stranger. She'd gotten better at translating wolf memories into human ones, but it took effort. She recalled fear, noise, pain. Limping toward what her instincts told her was a safe place, then panicking when she found herself not in a den but at a house that smelled of men and guns. She'd crawled into the darkness to hide. Then the change had come and she'd been left helpless against the cold and weakened by her wound. Later, there had been vague awareness of someone pulling her out into the sunlight, of warm water and a gentle touch. She opened her eyes and reached out toward Dominic. He hesitated only a moment and then came to sit beside her on the bed, his weight solid and comforting.

"Dominic, I need to tell you…" she trailed off, tears welling up in her eyes as she saw the concern in his face. "I should've said something before, but I didn't know how to say it." He picked up her hand and laced his fingers through hers, and she forged ahead. "I'm not what I seem to be, not really. Not at all, actually."

He studied her face for a long moment, his eyes thoughtful, biting at his lower lip. She was ready to swear he looked a bit relieved, but that made no sense at all. Finally he smiled a little and said, "Well...nobody's perfect."

2011-11-30T12:54:00.000-06:00

Victory!

This was the first year I really doubted that I'd be able to make it through NaBloPoMo, and then it turned out to be the easiest year yet. This blog turned six years old in October and the occasion totally passed me by, but somehow that seems almost appropriate now. It's become an easy, comfortable place, and November proved that sometimes it can be effortless. Okay, some days were a bit of a struggle, but nothing serious. So that's a nice feeling after all this time. It's nice to be here with no delusions of grandeur or expectations of fame, just for the pleasure of writing and the chance of making some friends. I'd like to say that I'll post more often now, but I know better than to make promises. Let's just say I feel refreshed and we'll see where that leads me.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading and commenting, this month and all the time, really. I'm especially grateful to those who left comments or sent emails about the Friday Fiction project. Solely because of your encouragement, what I thought was a throwaway scrap of nothing much turned into something pretty damn fun. I'm not being hyperbolic -- I thought that was the end of the story until someone asked what came next and I started wondering the same thing myself. And with any luck, on Friday it'll become the first piece of fiction I've finished since college. Will it ever count as Serious Writing? No. Will many people ever read it? Doubtful. Is it an impressive accomplishment during a month when people are striving to write entire novels in thirty days? Absolutely not. Do I care? Hell, no. I'm just excited to have done it. So thank you all, truly.

2011-11-29T22:58:00.003-06:00

Theatricality

I hesitate a little to write another "Nico has a fit" post lest everyone decide my chid is an irredeemable terror, especially after THREE of my Nico stories at work today started out, "So Nico was having a fit the other day, and…" But this one is still making me giggle so I'm going to post it anyway. I promise he's really a delightful child most of the time!

Nico had the most theatrical, dramariffic tantrum I have ever witnessed while we were out shopping yesterday afternoon. It was my mistake for thinking we could hit one more store after we'd had a long drive and gone to one store already, but he seemed fine. Famous last words, right? So there we were in Once Upon a Child looking for a shirt for his Christmas photos this coming Sunday, and I had the apparently insanely oppressive idea to try a shirt on him to see if it fit. (You fool!) I got him out of his stroller, took off his coat and shirt, began putting the Christmas shirt on, and he completely flipped out. Literally cast his little body face down on the ground, flailed, screamed, and tried to tear the shirt from his person. At one point he escaped my grasp and went staggering out of the aisle, still half naked and screaming. I told him, "It's just like Daddy's shirt! It's a big boy shirt!" (because MB always wears long sleeved button-front shirts) but he still wanted nothing to do with it.

By now I'm thinking, we already got this far, I'm damned if I'm quitting now before I find out if this thing fits. I got the shirt on, he kept shouting "No shirt! Take off! TAKE OFF SHIRT!" So I took it off, and he grabbed it from my hands and clutched it to his heart, screaming "YIKE DADDY SHIRT! Put on!" Jesus. So I started to put it back on, and it immediately became the Shirt of Acid again and was greeted with cries of "Take off! Take off!" Once I took the hated shirt off, he didn't want to put his regular shirt back on either, so he was lying on the floor howling "No car shirt! No car shirt!" while I tried to put his shirt back on and he did his best to rip it off, all in this little bitty store with other people all around. I finally got the shirt back on -- and I must admit, I'm really proud that I was able to remain calm, kind, and mostly amused through this whole episode -- plonked him into his stroller and speedily fastened him in before he could escape or disrobe.

I was putting the shirt back on the rack before hustling him out of the store -- because after all that it was too freaking big -- and he was gulping and sobbing, "No ride stroller! BUUUWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!! No ride stroller!" This woman in the aisle said cheerfully, "Oh, my goodness! He's speaking in full sentences. That's very advanced!" I don't know why, but for some reason that was the most hilarious part of the whole incident. So thank you, random other woman at the store, for complimenting my child in the midst of his most heinous public behavior to date. (Actually, everyone there was very understanding and nice. Nary a side-eye to be seen. Perhaps they're used to flailing half-naked screaming toddlers?)

And of course, of course he still needs a shirt for his pictures, so we'll be shopping again on Saturday. I think this time I might drug him first, though. Him or me.

Reading: The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater (I gave up on Inheritance and I'm so relieved)

Playing: Only by the Night by Kings of Leon

2011-11-28T23:46:00.001-06:00

Family Time

We spent the weekend visiting MB's family and it was pretty wonderful. We don't see them as often as we probably should, but it's hard when we're the ones who do the traveling. Our last visit was in July, and Nico was still pretty shy around everyone. This time, it was so much better. He walked right in and started calling MB's parents mamaw and papaw. (What? He's half Southern.) Nico has traditionally had a good time playing with his mamaw but has been shy around his papaw. This time, no worries. Papaw brought out the remote-controlled trucks and it was all over after that.

We spent Friday night and Sunday at MB's parents' house and most of Saturday at his grandparents. BoMB and Nie made the trip from Memphis and it was great to see them. I've been missing them badly these last few weeks. We ate too much, we played games, we chatted, we ate more. All in all, a pretty ideal Thanksgiving.

It was funny, but somehow seeing Nico with my inlaws really made me notice how big he's getting. I guess it was just that I hadn't seen him in those houses or around those people since he was much smaller, and it was like putting him in front of one of those police line-up walls with the height marks on it or something. Last time you were only 1/3 the size of that countertop! Holy shit, now you're half as tall as your grandmother!

I've often said that I feel like I won the inlaw lottery, and it's still true. They may not be perfect, but they're pretty great, and Nico is so very lucky to be surrounded by so many people who love him.

2011-11-27T12:00:00.000-06:00

Wordless Weekend #8

2011-11-26T12:00:00.000-06:00

Wordless Weekend #7

2011-11-25T00:15:00.008-06:00

Friday Fiction #4

part one
part two

A few days later, she drove back to the reservoir and this time she parked near the main trail that circled the lake. She set out at a comfortable pace, letting the morning sun and the movement of her limbs warm her body. As she’d hoped, a mile or so into her hike she spotted a familiar figure ahead of her, walking with his hands in his jacket pockets and his face tipped toward the sky. She quickened her steps to catch up, calling out, “Hello!” He half-turned as he walked, his expression registering mild surprise when he recognized her.

”I’m not lost this time, I promise,” she said, falling into step beside him. “I’m Abby, by the way.”

His name was Dominic and he wasn’t a big talker. They walked the four mile loop together, mostly in silence, and the quiet was surprisingly comfortable. She still wasn't sure what it was about him that had hooked her. She had always dated pretty city boys, not that it had ever worked out very well. This one, he was big and solid and steady, the kind of guy who probably always had mud on his boots and dirt under his fingernails. And for Christ’s sake, he had literally pulled a gun on her already, though she could admit she had kind of deserved it. Her life was complicated enough without trying to fit a guy into it all, but she just couldn’t bring herself to walk away.

As they neared the patch of gravel where she’d left her car, she bumped her arm against his. “I realize we just met, and for all I know you’re actually a serial killer, but I’d really like to see you again.” Her cheeks warmed as he looked down at her with a smile curling at one corner of his mouth.

”All right,” he said.

”I have to work the rest of the week, but maybe I could come back up on Sunday afternoon?”

”Sunday’s good. What do you like to do other than sneak up on people in the woods?”

”I’m pretty easy,” she told him with a wink as she turned to go. “Surprise me.”

This girl, Abby, she was different than any woman he’d ever known. At first he felt awkward around her, never knowing what to say or when to speak up. Through the Spring, though, they fell into a comfortable rhythm. She’d come up to visit most Sundays and he’d take her to one of his favorite places in the backcountry. It had started as a test, sort of, that first weekend when he’d taken her to the small cave he’d found high on the ridgeline. She kept pace with him up the steep trail and slogged happily through a muddy creek bed up to the exposed rock face with its low, half-hidden entrance. When he handed her a flashlight she’d given him a quizzical look but had laughed and said, “All right, I’m game.” Once they were inside the small cavern, she’d exclaimed with delight over the delicate formations and the translucent blind fish darting through the frigid stream.

He hadn’t had a girlfriend since college, when he’d lived with a brassy, pushy poli sci major named Sabrina for three semesters in a little apartment near campus. They’d had a good time, but neither of them had ever claimed to be in love. She’d gone off to grad school in New York after graduation and he’d come up here. Every once in a while he’d meet someone in town, but those usually didn’t last and he was getting too old to hook up with the college girls who came to the woods to hike on the weekends, even though they sometimes didn’t seem to think so. No matter what his few married friends told him, he felt like dating was just generally too much work.

Until Abby had dropped into his life, he’d thought he was pretty happy, but he couldn’t deny that it was nice to have someone around again. It didn’t hurt that she was pretty and smart and could make him laugh until his side stitched. She didn’t seem to want anything more than company and some fun, and even though she never said it, it was pretty clear she had business of her own that she wanted to keep to herself. Sometimes she arrived at his door smelling of soap and clean laundry, well-rested and content. Other times she turned up disheveled and distracted, the scent of fresh earth and fallen leaves clinging to her hair and skin, as if she'd been sleeping outdoors. The slightly wild look in her eyes on those days warned him not to push, so he didn’t ask and she didn’t talk about it, but she started spending more and more time with him and he started to realize that he was falling for her.

As a human, Abby knew that the backcountry side of the lake was the safe choice. There were just too many people moving through on the cabin side, too many chances for someone to stumble across one of her little caches of clothes and take them or to report a wolf hanging around the well-traveled paths. But as she grew closer to Dominic, it seemed like her instincts were resetting, both as a girl and as a wolf. Increasingly through the Summer, she found herself near the cabin when she came back out of her fur. She spent less and less time hiding in the deep woods and more time within range of the man whom she'd learned to associate with safety and contentment.

She'd never had a relationship like this one, easygoing and exciting all at once. She tried to keep a bit of emotional distance at first, knowing that eventually her secret and her unpredictable behavior would probably drive him away, but she soon gave up the fight. Nights alone at her apartment, once a happy little piece of solitude, became restless hours of wishing she'd gone to Dominic's instead. When they were together, she found that she forgot to worry. What began as a little bit of casual fun became a comforting routine -- afternoons spent walking in the woods; evenings tucked up against him on the couch, his arm across her shoulders as they drank beer and watched football; nights burrowed under the blankets in his bed, his long limbs tangled with hers. He was kind and laid back and appreciative of life's small wonders, and she felt like after years of mistakes, she'd finally gotten something right.

And so in early November, she prowled the grove of pines and oaks near the house, kept in close by something her wolf brain didn't fully understand. It was rut season for the deer, meaning they were to be avoided, especially the males. It was a chilly afternoon near the end of her time as a wolf, when she was most restless. She was tracking a rabbit through the underbrush when she came upon him. A man, not the one she knew the smell of, one stinking of adrenaline and deer scent. He'd been downwind, out of sight, and now she froze for a moment, her instincts at war. She wanted to flee but she needed to stand her ground, and as she hesitated, he lifted something in his hands. There was an explosion of sound and then a high yelp escaped her throat as a slash of pain tore down her side. She turned to run, the scent of blood heavy in the air.

part four

2011-11-24T23:53:00.004-06:00

Thanks

This Thanksgiving I tried really hard to appreciate things that I usually take for granted. To appreciate my first world problems, you might say. And so, I am thankful for:

a roof over my family's heads
clothes on our backs and shoes on our feet
food on the table at every meal
reliable access to running water and electricity
my washer and dryer
a safe neighborhood
the means to ~~spoil~~ provide my son with toys and books and attention
yoga class
finding a job that I really enjoy
afternoon naps

Also, for things I never take for granted:

family
friends, especially those who might as well be family

And above all, always, I am grateful for MB and for Nico, my wonderful boys.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone…I hope your turkey was tender and your pies were delicious.

2011-11-23T23:14:00.002-06:00

O Chri-muh Tree

I usually put up the Christmas decorations the Friday after Thanksgiving and the plan is to do the same this year. Every year I forget to check beforehand to make sure I have enough strands of silver star garland and end up going to the store halfway through the trimming process to buy more. Tonight, I remembered this suddenly as we were driving home from swimming lessons. Since we drive right by the craft store, I pulled over and Nico and I had a little side quest. I told him that we were stopping to get something for the Christmas tree, and Nico dutifully repeated "Chri-muh tree?" We found the star garlands and I gave one to Nico to carry. "Star!" he announced, carrying it proudly through the aisles in his little fist. "Star!"

When we got to the checkout, he laid it up on the counter when I asked him to, but as soon as the clerk picked it up and he couldn't see it, he wailed "Star? Star?!" I guess he took his garland-carrying duty pretty seriously. We told him he could carry the bag once it was paid for, and the girl hurried to bag up the garlands and hand them to me. I passed the bag to Nico, who eyeballed it skeptically and then dropped it, asking "Star?" I finally took one garland out of the bag for him and he carried it to the car, then into the house once we got home. And as we were walking out of the store, Nico piped up "Bye, Chri-muh tree! Bye, Chri-muh tree store!"

Something tells me the holidays are going to be pretty rad this year.

2011-11-22T23:32:00.003-06:00

Bits & pieces

Therapy fodder

Nico, MB, and I were hanging out in the living room earlier, having our customary playtime before bedtime while Indy lounged on the loveseat. At one point MB brought out a pair of construction paper airplanes he made for Nico a while back. "Daddy launch!" Nico cried, and MB let one fly. It floated beautifully across the room and something in its flight must've sparked Indy's Labrador instincts. He sailed across the baby fence, ears blowing gently back, and retrieved the airplane as it touched down on the floor. We're talking dog show quality, here. Then he turned and bounded back up and over the fence as Nico tore after him shouting, "No! No! Noooo!" And because I am a model of decorum and kind parenting, I laughed until I cried.

Ready to buy my ticket

Have you seen the trailer for the new Pixar film yet? It looks wonderful…and also if I ever have a daughter, there may be some resemblance in the hair department.

(gratuitous toddler hair pic)

New celebrity crush?

I don't usually have celebrity crushes, but damn. Sort of like Orlando Bloom for grownup ladies.

Must resist!

Do any of you go shopping on Black Friday? I love bargains, but I hate crowds and waiting in line. I went out on Black Friday once in college and it was the biggest waste of time. I keep getting tempted by deals, though…must be strong!

And this happened today

That's me with my favorite snake. He's really chill and kind of sweet in his own tiny-brained snaky way. What, like it's weird to walk around with a six-foot snake coiled around one's arm? Pssht. There was also a spontaneous lunch out today with nearly all my coworkers, which was pretty great.

Reading: Inheritance, the final(?) book in the Eragon series. So far it is…oof. Not very good at all.

Playing: Howl by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

2011-11-21T23:07:00.002-06:00

Cardi-ow, revisited

I realized the other day it's been over a year since I started going to cardio boot camp class at the gym. Turns out it really is like a bad boyfriend, only these days it doesn't so much make me feel like crap. I'm still the heaviest and the slowest in the class, but have come to terms with the fact that it'll always be that way when I'm in class with girls who go to the gym five days a week or do hardcore boxing training. I'm admittedly a little disappointed that I never lost weight (or fat, or a size, or inches off my ass, in case you're about to hop to the comments to tell me that muscle weighs more than fat), but I'm admittedly also crap at watching calories or skipping dessert or any of that other stuff. Also, I'm realizing that at my age, metabolism, and body's preferences, it's going to take more than one hour of hard work a week to make any difference. I am currently of the mind that I'll cross that bridge after I have the next baby, since it would really piss me off to eat salads every day to lose weight and then get pregnant and pack it all back on again. Probably I'm just putting it off with lame excuses, but I can live with that for a while longer.

I did get down to my pre-Nico weight for a few glorious months, but now I'm back to a stubborn three pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight, which was already a bit too much. But! Under all the padding, I'm really getting stronger. I guess it was August or so when I realized that even though cardio class was still hard, it was no longer holy-shit-hard. I added a fourth riser to my stepper and started grabbing heavier weights and shocked myself by being able to handle it. So it's hard, but I only feel like barfing if I eat too much before class. I'm usually sore the next two days, but in that rewarding I-earned-it way that isn't so bad. My abs are still kind of shot thanks to Nico's speedy sunroof exit, but they're much stronger than I ever thought they would be again. And I was shocked to catch a glimpse of my upper back in the mirror after a shower the other day and see that it actually looked … really good. If only I could magically find a formal event to attend wearing a strapless ball gown to hide everything from mid-back down.

Anyway, I'm sure none of you were on the edge of your seats wondering about the state of my cardiovascular health, but if any of you are thinking about trying a cardio bootcamp class, I encourage you to give it a shot. And if you already have and feel like it's too hard and you'll never make it, maybe you really will, if you just hang in there for a bit.

2011-11-20T10:07:00.000-06:00

Wordless Weekend #6

2011-11-19T22:00:00.002-06:00

Wordless Weekend #5

2011-11-18T00:30:00.003-06:00

Friday Fiction #3

(part one is here)

She stood for a long moment with her hands half-raised, palms toward him in what she hoped was a pacifying gesture as her heart hammered in her chest. Then he lowered the gun, pointing the barrel down and away, though he didn’t sling it back over his shoulder just yet. She didn’t smell any fear on him this time.

“Sorry,” he said. “You spooked me.”

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I was just trying to find my way back out of here.”

“You’re lost?”

“Yeah...it’s embarrassing, really. I parked by the backcountry campsites and went for a hike, but I must’ve got turned around somewhere.”

His eyebrows drew together just a bit, not quite a frown. He knew as well as she did that the backcountry sites were ten miles away over rough terrain. She wasn’t sure if he believed her story, but it didn’t seem to matter much to him if it was true or not, because the next thing he said was, “I can give you a lift to your car if you like.”

She smiled at him, trying to appear earnest and friendly. “That would be great, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”

“No problem.”

She followed him back down the path to the cabin, where he unloaded the rifle with quick, practiced fingers and locked it in the toolbox in the bed of his pickup. He offered her a hand up into the cab, his touch sparking a burst of heat that raced up her arm and made her heartbeat quicken again. She peered at him sideways through the curtain of her hair, trying to decide if he’d felt it, too. If he had, he showed no sign. He simply climbed in, put the truck into gear, and pulled it out onto the narrow gravel road that led up the hill. After about a hundred yards, he got out to unlock a low crossbar gate marked “NO ACCESS - STAFF ONLY,” letting in a burst of cooler air from the shadows under the tall trees behind the house. She smelled oak and pine, foxes and rabbits, songbirds, and a bit of the lingering winter’s particular bite. She also thought she smelled one of the others, but the scent was gone before she could pinpoint it for certain.

Something was off about the girl, he just couldn’t figure out what. She didn’t feel dangerous, just strange. She was easy enough on the eyes, tall and a bit on the skinny side, with long blonde hair worn loose around her face and odd amber-colored eyes. She smelled like some kind of girly soap and fresh air. He was pretty sure she hadn’t hiked across the ridge, even if she was dressed in jeans and a fleece jacket and a sturdy pair of boots. He didn’t know why anyone would lie about something like that, but people got into all kinds of weird business out in the woods and most of the time it was stuff that was embarrassing to discuss. Usually he figured he didn’t need to know, as long as they weren’t hurting anything. He'd been out here three full years and had opted not to ask a lot of questions. Most people just wanted a nice day out, and even the weird ones were generally harmless. The ones that weren't, he could usually spot those coming.

Most of the time things were quiet, and that's why he liked it. He'd never been much for talk or for crowds, and generally being around too many people made him nervous after a while. Four years at college in Ann Arbor had been enough city to last the rest of his life. People who ran into him on the trails or at the nature center were always asking how he could stand it, living in the middle of nowhere. They couldn't seem to see the fullness of the world that was all around them. He loved the feel of the land under his feet, the way the woods told its secrets in tracks and on the wind, watching for the first green shoots of Spring and the first yellow leaves of Fall. He had come to know this place like a friend, and these days it felt more like home than anywhere else ever had.

The drive to the lot where she’d left her car only took about fifteen minutes by the access road. She didn’t say much, just a few comments about how nice a day it had turned out to be and how she was grateful for the ride. It was an uncommonly pretty early Spring day, the still-bare branches of the trees outlined against a clear blue sky. He drove along the western edge of the reservoir and when they reached the high point where the trees thinned and the lake came into view below, he heard the girl gasp a bit. With the water sparkling in the sun, the far shore lost over the horizon, it really was beautiful.

“I’ve never seen it from up here,” she said.

“Most people don’t,” he replied, glancing over at her.

She was smiling at him, her face alight with the joy of the moment, and he found himself smiling back. She really was pretty, he realized, as the sun brought some color into her cheeks and set her light hair aglow. He dropped his eyes from hers, turning his attention back to the road. Something about her was still nagging at him. It was the strangest thing, but when he’d circled back on her out on the trail, he’d fully expected to find an animal following him, not a human girl. He was still sure there had been something else out there, something with teeth.

There were fifteen wolves she’d run with in these woods at one time or another over the past year, and most of them were just wolves. But there were at least a few others like her. She’d never seen them as humans and had no idea where they went when they weren’t in their fur or how long they’d been coming to the reservoir to hide. She’d found it by accident one day as she drove around aimlessly, crying over her shit luck and the stress of trying to keep her life together and having finally lost her job after months of making excuses for needing to take nearly a week off each month. It had felt like a revelation to step out of the car and be surrounded by hundreds of acres of woodlands, to hear no traffic sounds or barking dogs. Setting out on foot, she’d walked the trails for hours, rarely passing anyone else. The rich scents of the forest overwhelmed her senses, calling to the wildness inside. The place was quiet, big, and sparsely traveled -- everything she needed to make herself disappear.

She went back day after day, week after week, even when she had no need to hide. Right before her unemployment benefits ran out, she’d landed on a job waitressing at a little roadside place just outside of the closest town. The owner had a tiny apartment upstairs that he let her stay in as part of her pay, she was allowed to eat in the kitchen at the end of her shifts, and he didn’t ask questions when she told him she had to go home for a few days each month. As long as she made enough in tips to keep her car insured and full of gas, she thought things would work out. She sold off most of her stuff and left the city she’d lived in her whole life, moved to the kind of small town she’d always made fun of, worked a job she’d always looked down on, and found that she was about as happy as she’d ever been. Until the day she followed a bleeding doe out onto the lake and misjudged the ice, she’d never come close to trouble. Glancing over at the man in the driver’s seat, she reflected that she might’ve found herself some trouble at last.

part three

2011-11-17T22:51:00.001-06:00

Gadgetry

I am not a big gadget person. I don't have a Kindle or a Nook or a Kobo or an iPad. I have an mp3 player but I don't ever use it these days. For years and years, every time I had to get a new cell phone, I went with a basic bare-bones Nokia bar phone. I actually found this photo of my three Nokia phones while looking for something else on the blog:

Considering I used each of these until it pretty much died on me, that should tell you something about how long I had simple no-frills phones. After the last Nokia started crapping out (and wasn't compatible with the then-new 3G technology), I finally decided to try a Samsung flip phone because I really wanted a phone with a camera. MB got an iPhone 3G and we felt very fancy about it. I did like having a camera phone, but I HATED that stupid Samsung phone. It dropped calls like crazy pretty much from day one. I traded the first one in on warranty and then had the same problems with the replacement. MB kept trying to convince me I'd love an iPhone, and I kept protesting on the grounds that it was way too fancy and expensive for someone who routinely dropped her phone in parking lots and then had to collect the two pieces of the case plus the battery from under her car.

So I suffered along with my crap phone (which MB and BoMB dubbed the SamDung) for the duration of MB's two-year iPhone contract, and once that contract was up he moved on to the iPhone 3GS and I inherited the 3G. I will always remember the day I got my first iPhone because I was very pregnant with Nico when it happened, in the late fall of 2009. I remember not because I was excited or sold on the merits of smart phones, but because the swap of data from my phone to the hand-me-down iPhone was supposed to take 5 minutes and instead took an HOUR AND A HALF, all while I stood there, pregnant and needing to pee and starving and trying not to rip anyone's face off. It turned out, though, that MB was right and I loved the iPhone. I loved the camera, the access to google calendar, and being able to check my email on my phone. After Nico was born, I stared moon-eyed at his photos on Facebook and read blogs endlessly via feed reader on my phone while I nursed and pumped.

MB and I both had Dell laptops for ages, but his died spectacularly around the same time he got his second iPhone and he -- being a convert to the religion of Mac -- bought a MacBook Pro as a replacement laptop. And oh, you guys…how he RAVED about this computer. He tried to convince me I needed one, extolled its virtues, explained all its advantages. I waved my cane around and told him to get off my lawn, even though he had been right about me loving my iPhone. See, I've never liked Macs…never. In college we only used them in the science labs and no one was ever there to show me how to work them. There was no right click button on the mouse, and they couldn't read my documents that I created on my PC at home. Useless to me! And when they locked up, the only way to shut them down was to force quit by either holding in the power button or unplugging them. We had a Mac in the office at work, too, and it was also nearly impossible to use. (I'm sure all you Mac people are clawing at your faces right about now.)

You may have guessed where this is going, especially if you saw me post about it on Twitter a month or so ago…my creaky old Dell had become increasingly erratic. The battery was basically useless - if the cord came loose, I had about two minutes to reinsert it before the computer would die without warning. The screen had been replaced already after developing a bizarre streak of discoloration right down the center. It was slow as hell and not running programs super well. MB lobbied endlessly for me to get a Mac. (And right now you're thinking, "He offered you a shiny new MacBook and you resisted? The hell, woman?") I finally told him, Look, I'm sure I'll get used to it. You know how I am. I hate change, I hate spending money on fancy toys, but eventually I learn to love them. Financially, it made sense to go ahead and buy one rather than waiting for the Dell to fully die, so we ordered the Mac. I'll probably never live down admitting this twice but MB was right again.

I'm still getting used to some of the differences, but overall, the MacBook is really sexy. My favorite feature, by far, is the text shortcut option. Gone are the days where I have lamented my choice of blog alias as I typed "velocibadgergirl" three times to leave every blog comment. Now I can type vbg and hit the space bar and the computer fills it in for me. I can type htpvbg and it fills in my blog URL. Of all the things the Mac can do, I think this is my favorite. I'm a simple creature. And I guess I've been fully converted to the dark side, because not a month after I caved and ordered the MacBook, I caved again and MB ordered two shiny new iPhone 4S-es. Maybe I'm becoming a gadget person after all.

2011-11-16T23:00:00.002-06:00

Phoning it in

I haven't done it yet this month and fell asleep in front of my computer at 10 pm and again while typing this sentence, so I think it's warranted. Will try extra hard to be interesting tomorrow.

2011-11-15T23:24:00.005-06:00

Five minute book reviews

I used to have time to write book reviews, but these days I'm lucky if I can find the time to read books, so the reviewing has fallen by the wayside. I've read a few good ones since recommending Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, though, and thought it would be fun to do some super-quick reviews, written in five minutes or less.

Hunting Unicorns by Bella Pollen

I started this one, didn't get hooked into it, and ended up putting it aside to read Miss Peregrine. I picked it back up after my detour, though, and ended up really liking it. I was initially thrown for a loop by the quick dispatching of one of the two brothers the flap copy promised the book would feature, but don't worry…the story manages despite the slight difficulty of one of the main characters being dead. This is one of those books where now that I'm done with it I can't articulate exactly what it was about it that made me like it so much, I just remember that I was very happy to have read it once I finished. I suppose that's not exactly a ringing endorsement, but really - give this one a try.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

This was a lovely story, if very sad through much of it. There were parts involving an infant that were hard to read (no abuse, just some difficulties), but the ending was happy if not perfectly idealized. I feel like some parts of this hit me harder than they would have before I had a child of my own, and while reading it I ended up thinking all kinds of introspective thoughts about being adopted since a failed adoption played a pivotal role in the main character's life. I found it somewhat reminiscent of Sarah Addison Allen's fiction - just a touch of magic and mysteriousness in an otherwise realistic story - though her work tends to be a bit lighter.

Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is easily one of my favorite authors of all time, and I will read and re-read his Discworld novels for the rest of my life. Though there have been a few other contenders, Sam Vimes has always been my favorite Pratchett character, and I have hoped ever since the tragic announcement of the author's condition that there'd be a few more Vimes books before the curtain falls. A new Pratchett book almost always feels like a gift anyway, but that feeling has definitely been amplified of late. Snuff did not disappoint, though it would probably be a hard first read for anyone not familiar with the Vimes arc, since events from earlier books (especially Thud) factor heavily into some key plot elements. If you're new to the Discworld and love a good cop story, start with Guards! Guards! and work your way through. It'll be worth the journey, I promise.

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

Having read and loved Maureen Johnson's 13 Little Blue Envelopes and The Last Little Blue Envelope, my curiosity was piqued for her new novel, The Name of the Star. Well-written paranormal YA fiction is such fun, and this book definitely falls into that category. Teenage protagonist Rory is funny, smart, and a believable teenager without ever being insufferable, a feat in itself. It doesn't hurt that the story is fresh and left me looking forward to the next installment at the end. Not a Deep Thoughts book, but a good one. I ended up staying up until 2 AM to finish it, so you know it must've been good.

Reading: Mastiff by Tamora Pierce

Playing: Howl by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

2011-11-14T23:12:00.002-06:00

Rollercoaster! (of love) *

We had a playdate today with two mom / toddler girl pairs that we've been seeing about once a month for a while now. The girls are both a bit older than Nico, having turned two in August and September, and even though they're all still in the parallel play stage, I do notice that the girls are a little bit more interactive than Nico so far. They're good kids and probably good influences on my socially isolated little only child, and I really like their moms so it's a win-win.

We've been meeting up at the park and then going out for lunch this fall while the weather was nice, but it was supposed to rain today so I invited them to come to our house. Because of this, I spent yesterday evening cleaning. It was that really neurotic preparing-for-first-impressions kind of cleaning that makes me crazy while I'm doing it and then later makes me wish I had new people over more often because the house looks so nice. Let's start a match-up service or something where we can all go to each other's houses every once in a while to inspire cleaning. Or maybe that's just me? At one point -- and I fully own how insane this makes me sound -- I lint-rollered the fabric food from the play kitchen to remove stray dog hair. I cleaned so hard that it made Indy nervous. I even finally hung up the framed print that's been propped up on our fireplace mantel since we moved into this house almost four years ago.

Anyway, the playdate. Nico was really good through story time this morning, I told him we were going home to play with his friends afterward and he seemed happy, and then as soon as they actually arrived he proceeded to have the meltdown to end all meltdowns. He was wailing and flailing and at one point throwing toys onto the floor and even though the other moms were either not judging me or good at hiding it, I started to feel bad. Especially since the more shy of the girls was sitting on the loveseat beside her mother, staring at my heathen child in the throes of his tantrum. I tried to figure out what he was upset about, but it seemed to be nothing in particular - probably a bit of overexcitement combined with his refusal to nap yesterday.

He asked to go for a walk and I told him we couldn't leave our friends behind to go out, but the other two said they'd be happy to walk if that's what he wanted. Maybe they were just hoping to get him to shut up, but it turned out to be nice (and it didn't rain until much later, after all). We walked the kids to the little playground down the block, where the girls ran around and tried the slides and Nico…continued to flip out for about half an hour. He stomped around, he screamed, he flapped his arms. And I just looked at him and shrugged. What can you do? At one point it became comically pitiful, when he decided he wanted to swing but still couldn't calm down and thus was crying and crying while I pushed him gently on the swing. What a mess we were.

He was finally able to gather up the tattered shreds of his lost shit and did well walking home, eating lunch, sharing his toys, and playing for another 45 minutes, so playdate SAVED. Having friends with kids Nico's age is awesome, too, because we are truly in this together. One of them said her daughter has told her "I don't have to do what you say" and "You're a bad dog, Mommy." and I shouldn't revel in another's difficulty, but thank God it's not just my kid. After our friends left, I put Nico down for a nap and took a shower. As he tends to do, he woke up fussy about an hour in and I took him to lay on the big bed with me so he'd sleep for a while longer. Eventually he wound up sprawled out on the bed beside me, his feet tucked up against my leg, and it was so sweet and peaceful. Two is shaping up to be a whirlwind, a roller coaster, an exercise in the absurd, but I think it's also going to be pretty great in between.

* I feel slightly weird using a Red Hot Chili Peppers song as the title of a post about my kid, since their old numbers tend to be barely- (or not-at-all) veiled raunchy sex songs. But it fits, so it's staying. (Licorice whip gonna whip your ass!)

2011-11-13T12:39:00.000-06:00

Wordless Weekend #4

2011-11-12T20:00:00.000-06:00

Wordless Weekend #3

2011-11-11T23:17:00.011-06:00

Friday Fiction #2

“R.J.” I shake the lump under the covers. “Hey. R.J., get up.”

“Go away.”

“No. Get up.”

“No.”

I yank the blankets back and R.J. turns over, pulling the pillow against his face to block out the light.

“Mellie, I said no.”

“So did I.”

R.J. rolls onto his back and regards me with a scowl. “If I promise to get up for school tomorrow, can I have my blanket back?”

"Tell you what -- you can get up and go to school today, and then you can get up and go again tomorrow.”

My brother finally relents, kicks his sheet aside and sits up. His hair, a few shades more fair than mine, is sticking up at odd angles all over his head. He’s wearing grimy jeans and just one sock, with a hole that lets his big toe poke out. He stinks of cigarettes and stale sex. I pretend not to notice as I pull him to his feet.

“Where were you last night?” I ask, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.

R.J. shrugs, rubs his eyes with his fists. “Out.”

“Out where?”

He blows out a sigh, irritated. “Just...out.”

I grab some clothes from his dresser--they’re probably clean--and shove them into his arms. “I’ll make you some coffee while you’re in the shower.”

“Okay.”

He shuffles down the hall, and I chew my thumbnail as I watch him go, all angles and bones these days, his ribs and the knobs of his spine standing out in relief against his pale skin.

I go back to the kitchen, sidestepping boxes of winter clothes that we haven’t bothered to unpack yet. When we left our last place, my mom forgot to grab her coffeemaker from the kitchen, so I have to use a saucepan and guess how much coffee I need. I put the water on to boil and go back to my room to finish getting ready for school. This is the first place we’ve had in years that has three bedrooms. R.J. and I used to take turns using the living room couch for a bed. We’d switch each time we moved. But ever since the whole thing with Bill, R.J. hasn’t let me take my turn on the couch. I think he’s afraid Bill’s coming back and wants to put himself between Bill and the part of the house where Mom and I sleep.

It’s nice to know R.J.’s got a bed now, instead of keeping watch in the front room, but the three bedrooms are probably the only redeeming quality of this house. The hot water runs out in 10 minutes, the carpets are gross, the wallpaper is peeling, and the kitchen is the only room that doesn’t smell kind of like cats and mothballs. That’s probably the only reason we could afford this place--no one else wanted it, so our sleazy landlord cut Mom a deal.

I finish packing up my books and get back to the kitchen just in time to save the coffee from boiling over. It smells pretty harsh, so I add a generous helping of milk to R.J.’s cup. He wanders in, hair uncombed and shoes untied.

“Do you want some toast?”

He groans and makes a face as he slumps into a chair and pulls his cup across the table.

I roll my eyes. “Okay. No toast.” I slather extra strawberry jelly on my two slices, but it doesn’t really make me feel any better.

R.J. drinks his coffee with his eyes closed, looking tired and much older than seventeen. He’s wearing the ratty Pearl Jam T-shirt I gave him for Christmas a few years ago. The sleeves are a little short on him now, and his tattoo shows. I used to be fascinated by the intricate knotted design that winds around his right arm. We lived in Cincinnati back then. R.J. was 14 but looked older, and he’d gone down to Kentucky with his friends and lied to the tattoo artist about his age. I turned 11 that summer, and I’d watch him, trying to trace the interlacing lines with my eyes until he'd eventually move and I’d lose my place.

My eyes don’t untangle the knots today. Instead, they take in the fresh bruise inside R.J.'s elbow, the faint track marks that radiate out from it like the legs of a pale spider. I sigh and refill R.J.’s cup. He drinks it straight and doesn’t say anything about the taste.

Two cups down, R.J. is as close to awake as he ever gets. “Thanks, Mellie.”

“You’re welcome.”

Mornings have always been my favorite time of day. Mom has always worked early-shift waitressing jobs, and usually has to leave before we're awake. When we were kids, R.J. would make pancakes for me in the morning, or cut my toast into the shape of a rabbit or a butterfly. He’d braid my hair and then tickle my nose with the end of the plait. I thought he knew everything. Now I make breakfast, which R.J. can hardly ever choke down, and I braid my own hair.

Mornings are still the best time of day, though. That’s when R.J.’s hangover is still hitting hard enough to keep that calculating look out of his eyes, the one that means he’s looking for a way out, as fast as he can get it. Sure, he’s sick as a dog most of the time, but at least he’s R.J. By the time I get home from school, he’s hollow. Every time a door slams, he jumps. If you startle him, he’ll flinch like you slapped him in the face. I try to stay away from the house until I’m sure he’s gone off to work, just so I don’t have to watch him fall apart.

Mom met Bill right before I started seventh grade, and he’d moved in with us by Halloween. He was really cool at first, almost like a dad. He took us to the movies and helped Mom with the housework. I don’t think R.J. ever liked him much, but I always figured that was just because R.J. remembered our real dad, who died when I was only 2 years old. R.J. and Bill tolerated each other, and once R.J. got his license and a job, he wasn’t home much.

Maybe I was too young to know better, but I didn’t notice that Bill was changing until the night I got up around midnight for a drink of water and saw R.J. standing at the kitchen window, his forehead resting against the glass, eyes shut tight. There was a broken whiskey bottle in the sink, and the next day Bill kept rummaging through the cabinets when he thought no one was looking. A week later, the four of us were sitting at the supper table when Bill suddenly pounded his fist on the table. We all jumped, and R.J.’s eyes went hard and angry. Bill said R.J. was stealing from him. He said it had been going on for months, and he was tired of it. He said that Mom had better do something about it, or he’d have to do it himself. Mom seemed nervous. She asked R.J. if he’d been drinking lately. R.J. said no.

“See, he didn’t take it,” Mom had said.

Bill called R.J. a liar, told R.J. he’d be sorry if he didn’t keep out of other people’s things. R.J. shot him a cold look and got up. Bill told R.J. to sit back down, but R.J. walked out the back door. I didn’t see him again for two days, and after that night I stopped finding broken bottles in the trash can outside the back door.

“Are you working today?” I ask R.J. as he leans back in his chair and lights a cigarette.

He nods, taking a deep pull. “Nathan and me are going to go out to St. Louis this weekend. You want to go?”

I raise my hand to my mouth, nibble absently at my fingernails. I do want to go, but I don’t want to have to come face to face with the parts of R.J. that he keeps locked away. I went to the garage once with R.J. on a Saturday, and before I knew what was happening, his friend Nathan was telling me stories about R.J. How he’d drink until he could barely walk. How he’d get all quiet sometimes and then you didn’t touch him unless you wanted him to take a swing at you. How he’d tripped out on ecstasy and pounded his fists against a wall until his knuckles bled. I managed to get away from Nathan by telling him I needed to pee and then I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. I’ve never told R.J. that I know these things about him. I won’t ever repeat those stories out loud.

“I better not,” I tell him.

“Don’t you ever feel like having fun?”

I want to tell R.J. that I do, that sometimes I think I’m going to go nuts if I can’t spend some time doing normal kid stuff. He doesn’t know that I’ve never been to a school dance, that I’ve missed all of the football games this year. I would tell him, but then I’d have to tell him the reason why I don’t go. I don’t go because I’m afraid something will happen while I’m gone, and no one will be around to take care of R.J. I feel bad enough avoiding him after school, but I can’t handle being here for that.

The night Bill almost killed R.J., I had been planning to go to the movies with some friends from school. We changed our minds at the last minute, but what if we hadn’t? If I hadn't been there and he'd died…I can't even think about it without feeling like I'm going to throw up.

“Come on, Melanie. Come with us this time. It’ll be fun...I promise.”

“I’ve got a lot of homework.”

R.J. frowns. “You work too hard.”

“And you smoke too much.”

“I know,” R.J. sighs. “I’ll quit soon.” But he doesn’t put out the cigarette.

The first time Bill hit R.J., Mom made R.J. promise he wouldn’t hit back. I had almost hated her in that moment, watching her wipe the blood off of R.J.’s face as she begged him not to fight Bill.

“He’ll change,” she had said. “Give him some time.”

R.J. said nothing. He sat on the edge of the bathtub, his lower lip split, his cheekbone bearing an angry dark bruise and a shallow cut from Bill’s big class ring.

“Promise me, R.J. Promise you won't hit him back.”

R.J. had promised, and he had kept his word. It took six months for Bill to kill the defiant spark in R.J.'s eyes. R.J. never retaliated. When school let out, R.J. stayed away from the house as much as he could. When he did come home, things were worse than ever. Bill didn’t need reasons anymore. He’d slap R.J. and say, Boy, you’d better look at me when I’m talking to you. An hour later R.J. would get punched for looking at Bill wrong.

When Mom told me she was going to leave Bill, I was so happy I cried. I really believed that once he was gone, everything would be okay again. But it didn’t happen like that. At first, Bill called every night, crying and begging Mom to take him back. He’d say he was sorry and swear he’d change, and when I could see Mom was about to believe him, I’d purposely distract her so she forgot her train of thought. When she got back to Bill, she’d be pissed off again. After a while, he got scary again. He would call all the time--threatening Mom, threatening to kill himself in her car while she was at work, crazy stuff.

Even that last horrible night, when Bill came to our house drunk, R.J. never hit him. Mom had opened the door, and Bill had pushed his way past her. Mom was red in the face, telling him to get out and never come back. Bill was yelling at Mom, saying how she had no right to treat him that way. He raised his hand to hit her, and I screamed. And then suddenly R.J. was there, catching Bill’s arm, forcing him back against the wall. For the first time in months, R.J. had come home from work sober. As he pinned Bill against the door frame, his expression cold and hard, he suddenly hadn’t looked like R.J. at all.

But then Mom had caught him around the waist, tried to pull him back. She said Don’t, R.J., and she was crying, and R.J. let go. And the next thing I knew, Bill had R.J. by the throat. He spun around and slammed R.J.’s back against the wall. I looked at Mom, and I knew that she was going to let it happen again, and I must’ve just snapped. I remember running at Bill, hitting him with my fists, screaming at him to stop. I should’ve just gone for the phone and called the police. Bill caught me with the back of his hand, and by the time I could see straight again, Bill had R.J. on the floor, pounding him senseless.

The neighbors must’ve heard the noise. Two cops showed up, burly young guys with serious faces. They kicked our door in and came in yelling. They had to drag Bill away from R.J. As soon as the cops pulled Bill off, R.J. tried to get up. The cops were hollering at him to stay still, so I ran to him. I almost wished I hadn’t. R.J. was half crazed, his face a mess of bruises. I started to back away, but R.J. caught my wrist and pulled me to the floor, so I held him until the ambulance came. I understood for the first time that night why R.J. wanted so desperately to get away from himself, why he’d do almost anything just so he didn’t have to sit quietly for a while and start thinking about stuff.

“Melanie?” R.J.’s voice brings me back. “You okay?”

I take a shaky breath and force a smile. “Yeah. I’m fine.” I check my watch. “We’re going to be late.”

“Sorry.”

R.J. follows me to the front door, taking his jacket down from the hook as he passes. He puts it on while we stand on the porch.

“Keys,” I say.

He puts them into my hand without argument. I’m only a freshman, but R.J. taught me to drive when I was 12.

We drive to school with the windows down, R.J. blowing streams of smoke into the cool morning air. We get to school two minutes before the bell. I take R.J. to his locker and unearth his physics book, then walk with him to his class. “Try, R.J., okay? Try.”

He manages a weak half-smile and opens the door.

As I walk towards my class, I fight back tears. I’m starting to realize that one morning I’m not going to be able to shake R.J. back to life.

2011-11-10T22:31:00.004-06:00

A day of toddlers

We had a program at work this morning for preschoolers and had one class each of kids aged three, four-ish, and five-ish. I ended up giving myself the three-year-old class by accident, but then was glad that I did because I had the most kid-wrangling experience of everyone involved. They were really good, really cute kids but it really was like herding cats at times. I've worked with the age before, but it's always a crash-course reminder of how three-year-olds want to tell you every story they can think of, have poor listening skills, and want to touch everything. Keeping this in mind, one can have quite a good time even when outnumbered. I was also happy to see how patient and competent the teachers were, since this particular school is a half-mile from our house and happens to be the one that my sister and I attended, and thus is on my list of places to consider sending Nico in a few years.

After that was over, I had to intercept another person trying to pull X and screw with my Y. I wanted to shout, "LISTEN TO ME WHEN I'M TALKING!" But I didn't, so points for me. And the first X-er has apparently accepted the compromise and is holding off on X-ing again until this weekend, so I no longer feel like punching anybody.

Then tonight, oy. Nico had a late, longish nap and seemed perfectly normal when I picked him up but began reenacting this production upon arrival at home. He did not want red pasta (pasta in tomato sauce), white pasta (toddler ravioli), or yellow pasta (mac and cheese) for dinner. He did not want a grilled cheese sandwich. He did not want applesauce. But he did want to whine and carry on and complain. Finally he grudgingly agreed to eat a banana and I decided I would accept it as semi-dinner and let it go. He eats well enough that a ridiculous meal every now and then is not a big deal. After the banana he asked to go play, but when I set him down to do so, he fuh-reaked out and starting wailing. I let him sit on my lap while I ate, and pretty soon he decided he did want a grilled cheese after all. He did not, however, want me to put him down in order to make the grilled cheese, and stood at his baby fence howling during the entire process. It was so bad that I sent one of those desperate, useless, and probably annoying texts to MB wherein the parent trapped alone with the raging toddler texts the parent who is off in the world presumably not being shouted at and says something like "OMG YOUR SON IS DRIVING ME TO DRINK."

And of course -- of COURSE -- once the sandwich was made Nico was too upset and choked up to eat it and instead sat in his chair gulping and coughing with big tears rolling down his cheeks. I win this one, though…I got one of his Little Bear books and read to him while surreptitiously popping bites of grilled cheese into his mouth every few pages, and he ate the whole sandwich. Hallelujah, praise cheeses. Once he ate, he was a new man. He was pleased to sit on my lap and let me read to him, and also to do this, which I must brag about:

I just cannot believe how many of those trucks he remembers now. (And a grateful shout-out to Jen, who sent him that book!) MB won the day by bringing home a package of mint Milanos for my pain, so all in all I suppose the whole thing comes out weighted mostly on the "win" side, and hooray for that.

**********************************************************
There's no graceful segue into this, but you can click over to my review blog between now and November 20 to get a 25% off coupon for Melissa & Doug toys.

2011-11-09T22:19:00.000-06:00

Dickery, dishwashing, dogs

If I specifically ask someone "Do not do X thing until after Thursday afternoon because I have Y commitment," and they read my email and then decide to do X on Wednesday even though it will prevent me from honoring Y, am I right that it's a total dick move? This happened to me today and I was SO CRANKY for like two hours. While in the throes of my crankiness I kept thinking, "It's ridiculous to be this cranky," but then kept going back to, "No, it's ridiculous to blatantly disregard my request and then attempt to blow me off when I issue a polite cease and desist before I have become irreparably screwed. THAT is ridiculous.

MB has been working crazy overtime for a few weeks and we are thinking about using some of the extra money to replace our crappy useless dishwasher. The problem is, the one we have is a portable and is tacked on to the end of our counter / cabinets with a piece of butcher block on top of it. If we buy another one, we don't want to get another piece of junk portable and would much prefer to get a "real" dishwasher. The problem is, we don't have a cabinet to put it into, and don't have the money right now to redo all our cabinetry. So I'm wondering, could we get a regular dishwasher installed where our portable is now and then just build a wood surround for it to hide all the workings and support the butcher block? And then someday when we can afford to renovate our entire kitchen, we could tear out the surround and have it reinstalled in an actual cabinet. Does anyone have any idea if this would work?

Nico is going through this phase right now wherein he seems concerned that Indy is going to eat all his stuff. If Indy comes near him, Nico announces gravely that Indy is not to eat whatever toy he (Nico) is holding at the time. "Indy no eat blue tow truck! Indy no eat red fire truck! Indy no eat orange pickup truck!" My favorite is "Indy no eat tock shoe," uttered when Indy approaches while Nico is wearing his off-brand Crocs. I keep reassuring him, "Indy won't eat your tow truck / fire truck / pickup truck / Croc shoe. Indy is a good dog." I finally remembered to ask my mom tonight if there were any dog-eating-a-toy incidents that might've sparked this whole thing, and it seems that one of her dogs ate the letter G from Nico's alphabet puzzle last week. Species reputation, ruined.

Speaking of Nico and Indy, I took Nico with me to the fancy boutique pet store the other day and told him we were picking out some cookies for Indy. He immediately began reciting all the things we remind him about behaving with Indy. "No hit Indy!" ("That's right, we don't hit Indy.") "No pull tail." ("That's right, we don't pull his tail.") "No kick Indy!" ("No kick Indy.") I started to wonder if the pet store ladies were wondering just what kind of crappy pet owners we are, but it was kind of funny at the same time.

I gave Nico the thrift store fire station toy last night and oh, man. He loved it. I showed him how to put his two little fire trucks onto the ramp and lift it to make them roll out. For a few moments he didn't seem to want anything to do with it, but then he spent at least fifteen minutes rolling his little wooden fire truck up and down the ramp and driving it in and out of the garage. At one point he parked the fire truck inside and shut the garage door, then peered around to the back of the toy and grinned when he saw the back of the truck peeking out. He walked to the other side of the toy, peered around the back, saw the truck, grinned, and then repeated this three or four more times. I'm kind of reconsidering that fancy fire station as a Christmas / birthday gift now.

2011-11-08T00:05:00.001-06:00

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Before I had a kid, I always assumed that the parents of boys were faced with clothing choices limited mostly to sports and cars, with more-desirable (to me) stuff like dinosaurs, skulls, and funny-to-me sayings (i.e. "I'm only doing this until my band gets signed," "I do my own stunts") relegated to a small minority. I would think sadly about how, if I were to have a boy, I'd have to search far and wide through rack after rack of sports and cars to find clothes that I actually liked. Turns out, boy clothes seem to be mostly sports, obnoxious or not-funny-to-me sayings, and licensed characters. Of the licensed character wear, I'd estimate at least 75% is stuff from Cars the movie. Let me be clear - I generally really like Pixar movies. I even watched Cars on cable back when I was pregnant and liked it a lot more than I expected. But Nico has not seen Cars, he is not likely to see Cars anytime soon, and he does not honestly seem to recognize that the Cars characters are actually cars, they're so cartoonized.

And as much as I assumed I'd be dressing my kid in clothes that I like, now that he has his own preferences, I really do want to buy things that he likes. I have found, much to my mounting frustration, that it is really, weirdly hard to find non-Cars car clothes, or truck clothes, or construction vehicle clothes, or even fire truck clothes. I do not get this, at all. With all the car-loving little boys that must be out there, how is there not a huge market for this stuff? And yet, I have scoured stores, I have searched websites, all to little avail. Unless I want my kid to be a walking Pixar ad, I have little to buy. The car / truck / construction shirts he does have were all lucky thrift store and craigslist finds, and I have taken to emailing craigslist posters to specifically request photos of "anything you have with cars, but not Cars the movie" (and I usually get photos of Cars the movie and football pajamas back). We're also admittedly picky, and tend to pass over anything camouflage or overly stylized…if it doesn't actually look like a car or truck, what is the point?

With Christmas coming up, I decided it would be nice to get Nico some new shirts and pjs since he'll need them anyway and he's young enough that he will probably not be upset to get clothes as a present. My previously-casual quest for non-Cars car garments has intensified a bit in the last couple of weeks, and eureka, I finally found some stuff. Thus, for any other parent in my position this year, let me save you some footwork and tell you what I got and where I got it. The list is not extensive, but at this point I'm thrilled just to have found something, anything.

I got three shirts from Kohl's this past weekend, on sale for $6 each. They had some other fire truck and truck stuff, but I didn't want to blow my whole budget, so I just got the three that MB and I liked the best (and thought Nico would like most).

After studying the Carter's pajama options on the Kohl's website for an embarrassingly long time, I went to the store and found out they only had half of the online options in the store, and of those, some of them just weren't that great in person. I did get the footie pajamas pictured below, though.

The two-piece pajama set came from Walmart, of all places. I have looked at their pajama racks every time I've been in there over the past month, and have never seen anything remotely Nico-worthy, and then out of the blue yesterday they'd added these to their Carters: Child of Mine selection. I did end up buying a 3T, though, because they seemed to run really small. Anyway, if even one person finds this information helpful, then I will be happy. In the meantime, if any of you know of any good secret sources of car clothes, let me know.

Since thrift store posts are kind of like decluttering posts and seem to be something that people other than me actually find interesting, I'll tell you that I also hit Goodwill and a consignment shop yesterday and found some good stuff for Nico. It was all cheap, of course, so I'll probably just add it to his rotation now rather than hiding it all until Christmas. I found three pairs of pajamas at the consignment store that I'm hoping he'll like. The middle pair will probably not fit for very long, but I only paid a dollar for it so I don't really mind.

Nico was kind of a pill at the first store, so at Goodwill I decided to pacify him with Goldfish crackers while I browsed. I had the plastic container of crackers wedged in the folded-up canopy of his stroller so that I could reach them easily, which was great…until Nico shoved his hand up under the canopy and pushed the container out. I caught it on the way down so that only half the crackers spilled on the floor, but gah. GAH. Once I'd cleaned that up and re-wedged the container so he couldn't spill it, I went back to continue flipping through the kid shirts and the very next shirt on the rack said "my parents are exhausted" on the front. Well played, Universe! I almost bought it for the sheer perfection of the comedic timing, but it had a stain and was $2 and I'm still not adjusted to the fact that I can no longer buy Nico's clothes from the newborn - 24 months 50-cent bin. I did buy him these shirts, which I like a lot:

And he got these, for a dollar total.

The fire station is missing the truck, but otherwise it's in perfect condition. I poked around online after we got home and contemplated ordering a replacement truck on ebay. I still may order one eventually, but since his little Tonka fire truck fits down the ramp, I might not bother. Man…I love thrift stores.

Oh, and because it made me laugh…a photo of Nico taken near the end of the second shopping stop. I think his expression reveals his opinion of the whole proceeding:

Reading: Mastiff by Tamora Pierce

Playing: an old beloved mix

2011-11-07T07:54:00.004-06:00

Stray dog strut

There's been a road crew working on the main road near our neighborhood for the past week, and on Friday after work I noticed they'd left their backhoe parked in the median of the boulevard where Nico and I go for walks. I took Nico down to see it as soon as we got home, since he's all about construction equipment right now. As we got close, two teenaged girls walked by with a gigantic yellow Lab mix following them. Seriously, this guy was a moose. His head was at Nico's face level, and Nico's almost 3 feet tall. As the dog galloped over to lick Nico on the mouth, the girls called out "That's not our dog, by the way!" and kept walking as the dog decided to follow us instead. The boulevard intersects with the really busy street right near where we were and it was rush hour, so I was really worried that he'd wander off and get hit. He had a collar but no tags. I didn't know what to do, other than maybe take him home and stick him in our backyard even though it would drive Indy bananas.

As I was trying to pull up the local classified ads on my phone to see if anyone had posted lost pet ad for him with a number I could call, this woman in a nice car stopped and rolled down her window to ask if it was our dog, since he was romping around her car as she sat there waiting to turn. When I said no, he came across with some girls who didn't claim him either, she pulled a U turn and parked. I told her I was trying to look up the ads and that he didn't have a tag. She opened her back seat and he jumped right in…she must've been a dog person anyway because she already had a bedsheet across her backseat. She said, "I'm not sure where to take him, but I guess I'll look online and see if anyone's posted anything."

About ten minutes later she drove by again and told me found the girls walking and they'd told her where the dog lives, so she was taking him home. Hooray! Sometimes people really are decent.

my kid, looking vaguely prizefighter-y

2011-11-06T00:07:00.001-05:00

Wordless Weekend #2

2011-11-05T12:29:00.003-05:00

Wordless Weekend #1

2011-11-04T08:00:00.005-05:00

Friday Fiction #1

          The wolf was swimming, but just barely, only her face and front paws visible as she sluggishly paddled. There was no telling how long she’d been in the water, but it was clear she didn’t have much time left. The edges of the hole were ragged where she’d scrabbled at the ice, trying to find enough grip to pull herself out. As he crept toward her, sprawled on his belly to distribute his weight, he realized she might not be strong enough to pull herself out even with help. Too late now, he thought, and squirmed closer. Her amber eyes were wide, showing the whites. She growled at him as he neared the the hole, lips peeling back from impossibly long fangs, and he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising as the primitive part of his brain registered predator! predator! predator! He fought back the low rumble of panic that was telling him to scramble and run, pushing the rough sacking in front of him to drop over the lip into the hole. The wolf was panicking, too, and began scrabbling at the ice again. For a moment it seemed like she would throw herself at the far edge until she wore out and went under, but she began working her way around in her desperate bid for escape. As her paws met the burlap they found purchase, and he held on tight as she clawed and hauled, slowly dragging herself up. She wasn’t a particularly large animal, but the water added weight to her fur and he felt himself slipping closer as she pulled. He dug the toes of his boots against the slick surface and braced against her weight with his arms, his shoulders screaming under the burden. Finally, her rear paws found the sacking and she clambered up onto the ice.

          As she bunched her body and then pressed downward with her hind legs to leap away, he realized his error. There was a crack like a shot as the wolf bolted into the woods, then the ice groaned and shifted beneath him. He pushed backward with his hands, forcing himself to stay flat and move slowly. There was another crack, then another, and just as he decided to take his chances and run, the ice gave out and dropped him into the frigid lake. The cold hit him like a fist and he gasped involuntarily, sucking in water, then fought to the surface in a blind panic, battling the drag of his coat and Carharrt overalls and heavy boots. He made it to the surface three times, but each time was pulled down again by the weight of his clothes. On the fourth attempt, he just barely got a breath before he lost the fight. He slipped under again, breathed in more water, and started to black out. A thought came to him, bizarrely clear -- So this is how I die -- and then strong hands were pulling at his coat, lifting him out into the biting air, dragging him across the ice. His wet eyelashes froze instantly, sticking his eyes shut. He vomited water, coughed and hacked until he thought his chest would crack open, while someone pounded his shoulder encouragingly and said, “Get it out, son, get it out.” There were shouts, radio distress calls, hands stripping his sodden clothes away and wrapping him in rough wool blankets. He couldn’t feel his hands or feet and everything else hurt.

          Later the doctors would tell him they thought he’d been in the water for ten minutes. A pair of moose hunters on ATVs had seen his truck idling on the road and realized something was wrong, had followed his tracks down to the lake and found him just in time. One of the hunters had crawled out onto the ice with a rope around his waist, and then they’d driven him to the highway in his own truck and met a county ambulance there. The hypothermia almost killed him, but the doctors managed to bring him back from that. Then the pneumonia set in and he spent two weeks in the hospital while they pumped him full of antibiotics and kept looking at him like he might die at any moment. He’d truly never felt worse in his life and wondered for a few days if they were right, but in the end they pronounced him cured enough and sent him home with a prescription for pills the size of a knuckle that he was to take for another three weeks. The hospital had been horrible -- too closed-up, too many artificial lights, not enough windows. He’d felt caged by the end, itchy and restless, embarrassed by the short gowns and the constant nurse checks.

          Back home, he felt mostly the same as before, though at first he was prone to wheezing after doing work that normally wouldn’t bother him and sometimes there was a rasping in his chest that made him cough if he took a deep breath. Colors seemed sharper, the sounds of the woods a little clearer, but he thought maybe it was all in his head. He never saw the wolf again, though he scoured the woods around the lake for her body. Probably wolves didn’t get pneumonia, he thought to himself as he split wood outside one afternoon, stripped down to a T-shirt under the sun on a surprisingly mild day. He knew his doctor would have a fit if she found out he was outside without his coat. She’d warned him to take it easy, to not get too cold, to avoid breathing in too much smoke or falling into any icy lakes. He had assured her that the last instruction, at least, he could promise to follow.

          He’d been sick, she thought, as she heard the tiny catch in his chest whenever he took a deep breath. She inhaled his scent, which was rich and earthy, definitely male, and found just a shade of something off, something sour nearly buried beneath the smell of his skin, the aroma of woodsmoke and gunpowder in his clothes, shampoo, soap and shaving lotion, and the toothpaste and coffee on his breath. He’d been very sick, but he was almost recovered now, only the barest scent of hospital and medicine and infection lingering deep where he couldn’t scrub it clean. She knew him, of course -- they all did. He lived in the old caretaker’s cabin and watched over the woods around the reservoir. In the warm months he put on a brown state park polo shirt and drove down to the little nature center, where he taught kids about trees or snakes or bugs. In the fall he hunted deer and always left the guts for the wolves.

          She inhaled again, his particular blend of smells tickling at the edges of her memory for a moment before suddenly locking into place. That scent, mixed with fear, at the edge of the ice. The reek of his sweat as he hauled her out of the lake and fought against the instincts that were telling him to run. He was the one. She realized now she should’ve known -- who else would’ve been out in the woods that day and come toward her with anything but a gun? Who else would’ve nearly killed himself to save a ragged wolf? She slipped into the underbrush to trail a few hundred feet behind him as he set out to walk the loop around the lake, his rifle propped lazily against his shoulder with the barrel pointing skyward. Looking at him now, she could assess him through different senses. He was no longer just a collection of movements and scents, now he was a man. Not a bad-looking one, she noted, maybe a bit taller than average, well-muscled but not heavily built. He moved like a hunter, she thought, agile and quiet. Today he wore boots and jeans and a heavy jacket, but no hat or gloves. His brown hair was clipped short, what little skin she could see still bearing some of his summer tan. She could imagine the muscles moving under his skin, the way he’d smell if she stripped away his gun and coat and clothes. There was something about him that her body responded to unconsciously. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, trying to isolate his scent from the smells of the woods around him.

          When she opened her eyes again, he was gone. She quickened her pace a bit and rounded the curve in the path, her step faltering when she saw only open trail in front of her. Then she heard a tiny click behind her and felt the hairs on her arms spring up. She turned slowly and found him standing in the middle of the trail, rifle butt set against his shoulder and barrel trained on her chest. His blue eyes locked with her amber ones. He didn’t seem scared, but there was no recognition or sympathy in his face either.
          “Who are you?” he asked, his voice low and calm. “And why are you following me?”
          She cleared her throat, preparing to speak for the first time in nearly a week. “Please...let me explain.”

part two

2011-11-03T22:53:00.000-05:00

Boom goes the dynamite *

First some blog housekeeping. I really liked the "Wordless Weekend" option from last year's NaBloPoMo, so I'm bringing that back this year. In the interest of doing something new and maybe sparking some ideas for myself (and because it went well last time), I'm going to instate Friday Fiction posts for the month of November. I'll post some scrap of fiction each Friday, either new or previously written. A warning - they won't be meticulously edited or researched, so don't expect greatness. I hope it'll be fun, though, and comments are of course welcome.

Second, some actual housekeeping. I went back to the basement tonight after Nico went to bed, hoping to make a little more headway so MB had fewer boxes to stuff into closets tomorrow morning. It took an hour and 45 minutes this time, but BEHOLD. (Excuse the crappy phone pictures.) The basement is FINISHED:

No supercool finds, except for a notebook containing a few pages I'd written for a story that I've resurrected. It was the exact scene I've been unable to recreate and was wishing I could find, so that's pretty rad. In the interest of full disclosure, not everything got tossed or permanently sorted. A few boxes of stuff (and some nice empty boxes) got stowed in the laundry room to be dealt with later.

I'm totally counting this project as done, though. Hallelujah, amen, cue Freddie Mercury and his scary chest hair.

* I'm actually not a Family Guy fan. The title was stolen from a hilarious story that my hilarious friend Rachel told.

2011-11-02T23:50:00.000-05:00

So my burden I began to divest

Prior to my recent(ish) decluttering efforts, I lived the life of a serious packrat. My big Year of Decluttering has slowed considerably over the past few months, and I realized a week or so ago that it was almost November and I only had two months left to make good on my promise to MB that I'd get this house whipped into shape by the end of the year. I feel like I've done a pretty good job keeping the common areas of the house uncluttered, and I'm still really proud that I cleaned out Nico's playroom and that it's stayed cleaned out. This is impossibly dorky, but I still go in there sometimes just because it makes me so happy to look around and see a little space that's just for him.

The big things I have left to do are
1. sort / purge the huge stack of boxes in our bedroom, most of which were carried up there from the playroom
2. organize storage space in our room to contain all of my stuff that's currently stored in the guest room
3. clean up the basement

The last item has suddenly jumped to the top of the list, as MB has been asked to host two game nights this coming weekend. I'm kind of glad, truthfully, because I tend to perform best under pressure, and nothing motivates cleaning more than the realization that a stranger is going to see the house. I've been sizing up the mess for about a week every time I've gone down to do laundry, and finally concluded that it's not as bad as it looks. And sure enough, I spent about an hour down there tonight and got nearly half of the worst work done. I was hoping to knock out more of it, but finally decided it was time to blog and go to bed. Even after I get it suitably straightened for this weekend, there will be some long-term purging and reorganizing left to do, but I will take "company ready" as a goal for now.

The best things I found in the boxes of forgotten crap were a working book light, my hilarious framed llama picture, and a small box of odds and ends I saved to mail to my friend Kate. I also found a Barnes & Noble gift card, but sadly it had no balance left on it. That would've been a good story, otherwise.

table side, before

other side, before (it still looks about the same, actually, but I think the photo makes it look worse than it is)

table side, after an hour of work

Goodwill / recycle / trash pile

Hysterical, yes?

(Are decluttering posts interesting to anyone besides me? I love reading them on other people's blogs, but maybe I'm the only one.)

Reading: The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

Playing: the soundtrack from The Nightmare Before Christmas with a little Mumford & Sons mixed in

2011-11-01T22:18:00.010-05:00

Everyone hail to the pumpkin song

My favorite things about Halloween weekend:

1. the weather was perfect

2. Nico and his adorable costume

3. after the disaster of last weekend, we got this one right - enforced nap, snack at home beforehand, then outings…and no meltdowns, hallelujah. We went to the annual Halloween zoo walk with a friend and her toddler on Sunday evening and then went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood on Halloween evening.

4. the fact that quite a few houses had a separate bowl of little kid treats like animal crackers and Goldfish…if there'd been a way to identify them ahead of time, we probably would've only gone to those houses.

5. a big group of polite, funny teenagers hanging out on one lawn at what was obviously their own Halloween party, handing out candy to the little kids

Nico's favorite things about Halloween weekend:

1. an hour with the big playground at the park all to himself (which resulted in this, one of my favorite photos of Nico so far this year):

2. scoring no fewer than six packets of coveted animal crackers

3. going for a long walk in the neighborhood with me and his auntie

4. having his toddler mind blown by this white pumpkin

5. the construction equipment parked outside the zoo entrance

2011-10-28T22:08:00.003-05:00

Photo Friday

View the entire Photo Friday collection on Flickr.

2011-10-27T21:21:00.006-05:00

It's almost Halloween!

So let's talk about Christmas! And some other stuff.

Cold November pain

Is anyone signing up for NaBloPoMo this year? I've done it every year since it was invented so I sort of feel like I have to do it, but for the first time ever I'm really not sure I can pull it off. It wasn't that bad the year I was pregnant and was surprisingly easy last year, but this year…I dunno, man.

And then I rolled my eyes.

I was on YouTube last night to watch the trailer for the badass-looking upcoming SyFy miniseries Neverland and clicked through afterward to watch two allegedly "official" trailers for The Hobbit. The first was more of a teaser than a trailer, since more than half of the footage used came from the existing Lord of the Rings films. The second had more original content, but started with a narrator intoning, "Everyone knows the legend, but no one knows how it all began." Except, yeah, we do, because it was a book first. And I will grant that many fans of the LOTR movies didn't read the books and that many who did read the trilogy didn't read The Hobbit, but still. Hold the hyperbole there, Mr. Movie Announcer.

Seriously?

I tore out a couple of things from the Toys R Us holiday ad mini-catalog thing as possible Christmas gifts for Nico and then looked them up online to see if they'd be appropriate for his age, worth the money, etc. One that I was really tempted by was this Imaginarium brand firehouse / police station playset:

Then I read the description, which includes the following: "This exciting new Imaginarium Police Station & Firehouse Play Set combines a Police Station and a Firehouse all in one! Ring the working fire alarm bell, slide a fireman down the firehouse pole & watch as prison inmates work out in the jail gym." Wait…what? So, cross that one off the list.

Lame segue

Speaking of Christmas and gifts, how do those of you with young kids handle the whole thing? Do you set a monetary limit and then buy whatever you can get for that amount, or do you set a limit on how many items each kid receives, or some combination of both strategies? Do you have some kind of traditional plan for gifts? I saw a forum post at some point where a woman said that for Christmas every year, her kids get something they need, something to wear, and something to read…so each kid gets a nice but utilitarian item, a new pair of pajamas, and a new book. I liked that idea, but also kind of like the idea of our kid(s) getting one big item for Christmas each year that we wouldn't normally shell out to buy (plus some small items in a Christmas stocking). I'm definitely going to do a new book under the tree "from Santa" each year and already can tell the hard part will be narrowing it down to one book (okay, or two).

Thus far this year, we've set a budgeted amount of money for gifts for Nico (which we'll probably exceed a bit, but that's how Christmas budgets go) which is not extravagant but which I can definitely stretch pretty far using my bargain-shopping wiles. There's not really anything coming to mind to get Nico as his one big gift, and I have a pretty long list of smallish to medium things that I suspect he'd love. Because of this I'm having some debate with myself over how many items equals too many items for Nico at not-quite two. On the one hand, he might be too little to know the difference or remember later how much stuff he got, so maybe it doesn't matter if we go a bit overboard with the number of gifts. On the other, I consider it one of my sworn parenting duties to not spoil the child utterly rotten. Oh, and since MB and I are generally the ones who have to pick up the toys, that also weighs into the decision.

Our issue is complicated by the fact that Nico's birthday is three weeks after Christmas, and he'll almost certainly be receiving a half-dozen new toys from family and close friends at that time. Last year we got him his play kitchen and the Little People Noah's Ark set for Christmas, and other than some books under the tree from Santa and his stocking, that's all we bought. I don't recall buying him anything for his birthday, though I might be mistaken. Advise me, wise internet types…what is your plan, or what do you think mine should be?

While we're on the subject

What are you putting on your Christmas list this year? I have the worst time making Christmas lists for myself, I swear. I can never think of anything I want other than boring, lame stuff like new bras and new trainers and casserole dishes. (Seriously, last year I asked for a casserole dish with a carrier and a rolling pin.) I think my list so far this year is a new pair of small plain silver hoop earrings and a book light. I'm so dull I bore myself!

Obligatory baby picture

After posting those photos of Nico with his crazy hair I finally caved and let MB give him another haircut last Sunday. I was a bit angsty but it turned out really cute (even if he does look way too big now):

(Fret not…the curls came back.)

Reading: The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

Playing: an old mix CD

2011-10-22T22:50:00.001-05:00

Almost-two

Sometimes almost-two is transcendent, like yesterday when I took advantage of a morning off work to take Nico for a walk in the sunshine. He takes walks with my dad almost every nice-weather day, but I don't know how far they go. I figured we'd just set out and wander until he got tired, and we meandered through the neighborhood for about 45 minutes. He stomped through the leaves piled along curbs and at the bottoms of front walk steps, announcing "Nico walk leaves!" He observed with great interest as I showed him how small acorns crunched under our shoes, then collected a handful of large acorn caps which he stowed in the pocket of my jacket rather than his own. He carried a large capless acorn in his small fist for blocks and blocks, his other hand wrapped tightly around my index finger. We crossed the street to investigate a parked school bus, walked across the grassy medians, stepped up and down at curbs. When our across-the-street neighbor came out as we were passing by to put out the mail, Nico -- usually shy and clinging to my legs in the presence of strangers and near-strangers -- marched right over to her and presented the acorn. We spent a bit of time at the playground down the block, then walked back home and had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. I was left feeling like this toddler thing maybe isn't so hard.

But sometimes, almost-two laughs in my face. Like tonight, when we took Nico to a really cool fall-themed event and then had to literally carry him kicking and screaming out to the car after he had a giant meltdown in the middle of it (because we are leavers to the core). He seemed so happy to be there at first, and I tried to get him excited about going on the hayrides and seeing a real owl. But once we started walking around, all he wanted to do was walk. If we stopped, he didn't waste time asking us to continue, he simply started thrashing and whining and, if we didn't hustle him quickly onward, would eventually fling himself to the ground. There were cute moments, like seeing him wade hip-deep into a gigantic leaf pile with a look of determination on his face, or how he climbed into the sandbox full of seed corn and walked around in it rather than just digging through it with his hands. And I know that he doesn't know he missed out, that I'm the only one who's sad about the fact that during our hasty exit we lost the tiny plastic snake he got as a prize for pulling five acorns out of the seed corn, but it was so disappointing. I should know by now to keep my expectations in check when taking a toddler into any kind of new experience, but it's hard. It's not that I'm disappointed in him; I'm just sad because I know he would've loved all of it if he'd just stopped being so damn two long enough to try it.

It's not quite best of times / worst of times, but almost-two is kind of kicking my ass.

2011-10-21T22:57:00.002-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-10-20T22:24:00.001-05:00

Otherwise occupied

2011-10-15T22:01:00.005-05:00

Wonderland

We ended up going to the geology club reunion on Saturday, and even though I was having social-anxiety second thoughts off and on the whole way there, it was fine. Better than fine, really. I had finally decided to approach it with the same mentality as I did my 10-year high school reunion: I'd go because if I didn't, I'd always wonder what I missed. Except this time I was left feeling regretful that we didn't opt in for the entire weekend. We'll definitely be doing that next time the reunion is held within driving distance. We were only there for about three hours total and didn't do a lot of mingling, but we did spend about an hour and a half fossil hunting on a road cut.

We didn't find anything spectacular but it was nice to be out under a perfect October sky, chatting with people who really get something I enjoy in the same way I get it. The fossil hunting is so easy there that you can literally just sit for a moment and you'll start seeing all these little bits and pieces lying on the ground in plain sight. I had forgotten the simple pleasure of sitting and waiting for the fossils to reveal themselves, and the first time I tried, there was this perfect tiny little blastoid lying right there at my feet. MB didn't know what it was, but he recognized the marvel of something that once was alive at the bottom of the sea being forever preserved in stone.

We also took Nico to the fall party that we were invited to, and that was almost a disaster but was more or less redeemed by the end. He fell asleep in the car on the way there and then woke up on the wrong side of the couch about half an hour after we arrived. He ended up staggering around crying for at least half an hour, and it was fairly awful. Nothing we tried to cheer him up worked in the least. He hated the glow bracelets that he loved last month on our camping trip. He didn't want a snack, didn't want to hold his flashlight, didn't want to look at trucks in the driveway. We skipped the hayride because I didn't want to ruin it for everyone by dragging my screaming toddler along for the trip. Eventually he acquiesced to a walk around the campfire and that calmed him down. By the end of the party he seemed to be having a good time, so I'm going to count the excursion as at least partially successful. Right before we left I was pointing out some constellations to MB and noticed that Nico was looking up at the stars, too. I don't know if he's ever noticed them before. I didn't take any pictures because by the time he stopped flipping out, it was dark. Believe me when I tell you that he was wearing a very cute hat.

On Sunday I took him to get his 21-month / Halloween photos done, and he had a ball running around in the photographer's backyard, kicking through leaves and running up a grassy incline while announcing "Nico walk uphill!" He's getting so big, you guys. So big. We're so lucky to know a great photographer who likes to take Nico's picture.

After our photo appointment, we picked up MB and went out to lunch. Nico spotted the boom of an excavator sticking up above the tops of the cars in the parking lot and was very keen to point it out to us. On our way out, MB told me to go pull the car around and walked with Nico over to the edge of the vacant lot next to the restaurant so that he could get a better look at the excavator. It was just a small, simple moment, but it was one of those moments where you think maybe we're doing this parenting thing right. We don't get to spend as much time with Nico as we'd like, but maybe the key is to always be willing to take ten minutes out of a busy day to go check out a dump truck.

Reading: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Playing: the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack

2011-10-14T00:22:00.001-05:00

Photo Friday

a beautiful Argiope spider, sadly deceased when photographed

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2011-10-11T21:43:00.003-05:00

Smartass in diapers

When Nico is doing something dangerous or Strongly Forbidden, I make a sharp "ah-ah-ah!" sound at him instead of shouting "No!" I don't know why, other than I want something very distinct and I mean business. I don't remember saying it tonight, but Nico was walking around earlier going "Mama ah-ah-ah. Mama ah-ah-ah." And okay, it was funny, but also kind of made me feel like a jerk because dammit, I don't even say it that often. So MB decided to help.

Nico: Mama ah-ah-ah.

MB: Say "Mama love-love-love"

Nico: Mama ah-ah-ah.

MB: Mama love-love-love

Me: Mama does love you.

Nico: Daddy love-love-love.

Me: Well, you can get your milk from Daddy's boobs tonight, buddy. See how that works out for you.

(Still accepting advice, too!)

2011-10-10T23:28:00.000-05:00

A series of dilemmas

1. the mascot

I was on the English academic super bowl team in high school, an fact that should surprise exactly no one. My cousin, who was a senior when I was a freshman, was also on the English team. In her day, the team made it to the state meet one year. On the way, they stopped at one of those gas stations with the random souvenir section and found a giant stuffed fish on a styrofoam tray, wrapped in cellophane like a fish at the grocery. They bought it and treated it as a team mascot of sorts for a few years. Then the bibliophile and I found it in the back of a cabinet in our team coach's classroom at the end of our senior year and ended up taking it to college with us because we knew the kids coming up after us wouldn't have any idea what its significance was.

Now it's 12 years later, the fish is at my house, and I'm in the midst of my Year of Decluttering. So what do I do with it? I really don't need it, but I feel bad just tossing it out. In a perfect world I could post a detailed Craigslist ad and send it on to be someone else's mascot, but in reality I suspect no one on Craigslist would even get it. I've thought about sending it to the current English team at my old high school (which wouldn't be totally insane since I have a friend who teaches there), but they probably won't get it, either. So what…just send it to Goodwill? Put it up in the attic? Poor old fish. What would you do?

2. the reunion

There is a geology club reunion this weekend that I'm on the fence about attending. The core group that's attending are all older than I am, and the version of the club that they reminisce about is one that I just caught the tail end of, before they all graduated and moved on to other things. I haven't been to a reunion since about…2005, I think. They're usually on weekends I have to work or they're five hours away and it's just not feasible to go. This year it's only about an hour and a half away and I'm off on Saturday, so I've been thinking about driving up just for the day. There are a few people there I'd really like to see again, but I'm concerned that I'll get there and everyone will be hungover and sleeping late and I'll just be sitting around, or that I'll go and just feel all peripheral and not in on the inside jokes and it'll be awkward. Further complication - Nico and I got invited to a bonfire and hayride thing at a friend's house on Saturday night, so I'll have to leave the reunion around 3:30 to drive home and change and get Nico ready to go. So, go to the reunion, or chill at home and go to the bonfire and have a more relaxed time of it?

3. the reception

I'll be going to a reception for a friend's wedding next month, but not the wedding itself as it was a private family-only affair. I went to her bridal shower and brought a gift from her registry then, so I'm unclear if etiquette indicates a second gift in this situation. Normally I wouldn't think twice, but holiday-related budgetary insanity is coming.

4. Hallowean

I'm thinking seriously about weaning Nico by the end of the month. I was hoping he'd just lose interest on his own so I didn't have to push it, but no luck so far. I love the idea of "the baby will let you know when he's ready to wean," but not if it means I'm nursing until he starts preschool. Not to be graphic, but I don't think he's really getting much out of the deal these days anyway, and we'll still snuggle and have bedtime stories and songs, so I don't feel like it's going to matter much to him once it's done. I just don't know quite how to initiate the process. A friend of mine had a chat with her son about it being the last time and then had her husband put the kid to bed a few nights, but Nico historically doesn't go to bed well for MB. Maybe a chat and extra cuddles and after a few days he'll get used to it? Ugh. I told myself I would not feel guilty about this, but now I kind of feel guilty. I shouldn't, I don't think…I almost didn't get to nurse him at all so getting to 20 months is pretty damn good, right?

Reading: The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Playing Nightmare Revisited

2011-10-07T21:28:00.001-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-10-04T23:54:00.005-05:00

Falling for you

Is it really October already? Cliché ahoy, but Jesus, this year is flying. Fall is my favorite season by far, so I'm loving the crisp mornings, cooler weather, and perfect blue skies. After the brutal summer we had, Fall is just a little bit more wonderful than usual. I get to spend about half of my workdays outside this month and I'm really looking forward to it. The stars have been so clear at night over our backyard this past week or so, too. I didn't think I would, but it makes me miss teaching astronomy at my old job. Last night I stopped to look up at the Summer Triangle on my way back from taking out the trash and saw a meteor. I just hope I don't lose track of all the constellations I knew before Nico is old enough to share them with me.

October is apple cider season around here and man, I don't know what it is about that stuff. I could take or leave apple juice, but I have to have at least one jug of cider every autumn. I took Noah out for a street festival lunch this week and it was pretty great if not super healthy. I decided to pretend that sweet potato fries count as almost-healthy, mostly because it was so cute hearing him ask "Fwy? More fwy?" Apparently Nico is also VERY EXCITED about pumpkins this year. I didn't even know he was aware of the existence of pumpkins, but he was quite adamant about pointing them out to us at the grocery this past weekend. MB and I ended up taking turns walking up and down the produce section with Nico while he declared, "Yay, pum!" and pointed at all the pumpkins lining the aisle.

I was hesitant to spend five bucks on a smallish one when I'm hoping to take Nico to a pumpkin patch this year to acquire one from its natural habitat, but he was so very excited. I ended up letting him pick out a perfect little pie pumpkin for $2.50, and you guys. He was so happy. He carried it proudly to the cart, announcing "Nico een pum!" (Nico's orange pumpkin) and chucked it rather unceremoniously into the baby seat. Once we got home, I put the pumpkin on the dining room table so he gets to see it at meals. He continues to greet it cheerfully, so I think we're getting our money's worth.

October is apparently the crazy month at my new job. I thought May was pretty insane, seeing as we had 2100 kids go through on field trips alone that month, but my work friend told me, "If you don't quit in October, you won't quit." I do like a bit of action, so I'm not too scared, but I have to admit...four days in and it is pretty nuts around there. Ask me again in November, I guess.

Other than work, we've got a few fun Fall things planned. There will be hayrides at the park, possibly a pet parade, a trip to a pumpkin patch, and of course, Halloween. I have always loved Halloween, and Shauna's post over at Pickles & Dimes today has got me looking forward to it already. What about you guys...any fun autumnal plans?

2011-09-30T22:11:00.000-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-09-29T22:55:00.002-05:00

I'm probably not supposed to say this on the internet

in case I jinx myself, but I am enjoying the hell out of my toddler these days. And I know parents got on just fine in the days before digital cameras and blogs, but I'm really glad that it's so easy for me to document his smallhood, because it's all moving pretty fast. I try to take a few photos every Monday so I can send them to MB at work, and this week I ended up with a whole series that I kind of love. Sure Nico can be completely impossible at times, but he's also so much fun right now.

2011-09-25T22:31:00.003-05:00

Wasn't hodgepodge a category on Jeopardy?

Do want

Clearance shopper extraordinaire Swistle posted about buying a really stinking cute quilt at Target for a rock-bottom price. I went to ogle the quilt online and sigh over the fact that it would be silly for me to buy one in case I have a girl next time, and discovered TWO full-price sets that I would love to buy for Nico. Sadness! If anyone sees either of these on clearance, please text me right away:

Victim of the classic overhype

Several people recommended Bridesmaids, including one friend whose opinions on books and movies I can almost always trust, so I rented it from iTunes last night. I have to say, although I loved just about all of Kristen Wiig's scenes (especially those with Maya Rudolph) and enjoyed the charming and sexily-accented Chris O'Dowd as love interest, the movie overall was not as good as I expected. I realize it's "just a comedy," but is it really not possible to write a witty adult comedy without diarrhea as a punchline? I wouldn't say I disliked it overall, but I'm very glad I did not pay to see it in the theater as I'd originally planned.

Lives up to the hype

I don't actually know if it was hyped a lot, but I finished the NYT Bestseller Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children this weekend and I really liked it. The somewhat open-ended conclusion made me wonder if the author had a sequel in mind, but even if he doesn't, I'm not left feeling unsatisfied. (It looks like his publisher has encouraged him to write one...I hope it lives up to the first.) Apparently the film rights have already been sold, and I suspect it would make a really good film in the right hands. It's a weird mix of sci-fi and sideshow, historical photos mixed in with the text, and I do recommend it. Here's a book trailer if you're into that kind of thing, and also a neat short video about the author's trip to find footage for the trailer. (Apparently there are spoilers in the comments, so be cautious.)

Warning: (cute) snake photos

One day this week, a woman walked into my office at work and handed me a tiny snake in a popcorn tin. It was a king snake, a very cool native species that we didn't yet have represented in our menagerie, so the boss declared we could keep it (we usually don't). The very next day while I was out in the field, someone else came in with a second tiny king snake in a shoebox, so now we have two. King snakes are really kind of bad-ass, because they're immune to the venom of native venomous snakes and therefore can eat just about any other snake they want. They're also supposed to be pretty calm and low-key in captivity, so that should be nice.

So far the first one is ridiculously feisty and tries to chew on our fingers when we pick her (it?) up, and the other one is really calm and will just relax in your palm. The teeth on these guys are so small that a bite literally does not hurt a bit, I promise.

To make up for the snake photos

A crappy phone pic that I love for it's hilariousness - Nico striking a sassy pose in a pair of vintage pajamas:

They don't fit very well, but they have cars on them and they're painfully cute, so he wore them anyway.

Reading: Hunting Unicorns by Bella Pollen

Playing: various mix CDs that live in my car

2011-09-23T22:03:00.001-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-09-20T23:11:00.004-05:00

Campers have s'more fun *

We took Nico on his first real camping trip this past weekend, since I don't think last year's swanky cabin trip (awesome as it was) really counts as camping. We went with two other couples to one of my favorite parks, which is about halfway between here and Chicago (home of Nick and J-Dog). I didn't really get nervous about the trip, but I admittedly did have moments of thinking I hope this isn't a disaster. We packed carefully, tried to anticipate Nico's needs, and hoped for the best and it really paid off for us.

We took Friday off work so we could leave in between breakfast and lunch, and stopped at about the two-hour mark to eat and hit up Walmart to replace a forgotten hoodie and buy Nico a cool flashlight and some glow bracelets. Nico happily read books and pointed out trucks until just before we got to our stopping-off town, had a bit of a meltdown at the store when we wouldn't let him keep the flashlight without paying for it, and then slept angelically in his carseat for the last hour of the drive. Once at the campsite, we were able to turn him loose for the most part while we set up the tent and unpacked the car. He did have some trouble with minding the boundaries of our site and not going out on the road that first evening, so I (shame!) stuck him in a baby leash so that I'd be able to sneak up on him and snag the end of his leash when he got too close to someplace he wasn't supposed to go. He didn't seem to mind, really, and the next night he minded the boundaries just fine and didn't need the leash at all.

He didn't want to sleep in the tent by himself that night (or the next), but I can't really blame him for that one. He ended up sleeping on my lap by the campfire for a few hours and then slept through the night beside me on our flattened-out sleeping bags once I went to bed.

rocking the baby leash and his "very nice hat"
On Saturday, we went for a hike after breakfast. We planned to do a three-mile hike that was classed as "moderate to rugged" but ended up on the wrong side of the bridge and decided to go ahead and do my favorite trail, a 1.7 miler classed as "very rugged." I remembered the three near-vertical ladders on the trail, but I had forgotten about the 140 steps. Luckily the steps aren't contiguous, and you get to go down about half of them either way you go. The views were awesome as always, and hauling Nico in the baby backpack turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. Even the stairs weren't so bad, though MB did assist by walking up behind us and boosting the pack a little bit for me. Some of my favorite shots from the hike:

After lunch, the others went on a horseback ride and Nico went on his first pony ride. We weren't sure how he'd react but he loved it, though it's hard to tell from the photos. It went so well that we talked about taking him back for another ride on Sunday morning, but it ended up raining in the wee hours so we decided to just pack up our damp belongings and head home.

There were a few rough moments, but overall it was a really great trip and I'm honestly looking forward to taking Nico camping again. I'm actually kind of bummed that we most likely won't get to camp with him again until next year.

playing a little cornhole

Some of my favorite childhood memories are of camping with my parents, and I'm so happy that we're going to get to build similar memories with Nico. It will be so much fun to share the stars and trees and trails and campfires and closeness of our family of friends with him as he grows. I have a feeling we have a lot of fantastic adventures ahead of us.

(more photos on Flickr if you'd like to see more of my cute kid and the nice scenery)

* Title stolen from an adorable T-shirt that my friend Tamsyn sent to Nico for the trip, which sadly did not arrive until Monday afternoon.

2011-09-16T00:03:00.000-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-09-13T21:15:00.002-05:00

Mirror

I've always been prone to what can best be referred to as the Church Giggles - when you start giggling at an inappropriate time, and then you can't stop because it's so inappropriate. Also, the annoying pre-laughing at the punchline giggles, where sometimes I'm trying to tell a joke and I start giggling uncontrollably so that by the time I get to the end, I can barely speak (annoying!). Tonight while I was singing Nico's bedtime songs, Indy wandered past the open doorway, and it reminded me of an incident earlier in the evening.

Nico and I had walked over to the playground down the block for a bit, and left Indy in the yard while we were gone. When we got back, Indy was so thrilled to see us that he started leaping around and, before I could stop him, jumped up to pinball off of Nico. Except Indy weighs 55 pounds and Nico weighs 27 pounds, so he pretty much utterly bulldozed Nico. Nico went down in the grass, Indy bounded off with me shouting "No!" after him, and then Nico - bless his heart - got up laughing and chased Indy down the sidewalk. And I know it's not really funny, I should be thinking Oh, what a close call! and wringing my hands or something...but, dude. I thought about Indy wiping Nico out and because he didn't get hurt, it was funny, in that horrible-but-funny way that videos of little kids getting wiped out by animals are always funny, where you laugh and you think I shouldn't laugh because he could've been hurt, but I can't stop laughing.

So when I saw Indy walk by the door, the comedic qualities of the moment in the yard hit me, and I had a brief Church Giggle fit. I think I would've made it through, but Nico saw me struggling not to grin, and he started grinning at me. That set me off again, and then he started giggling, and we ended up in this Church Giggle Feedback Loop. It started with me probably being a bit of an asshole mom, laughing at my poor toddler getting flattened by his own dog, but it morphed into this incredibly sweet moment. At rest and in his frequent moments of serious consideration Nico looks just like his father, but in motion, his expressive face is a mirror of mine. His crinkled eyes, his wide grin, the dimple in his cheek -- seeing it reflected back at me along with his infectious toddler giggles was pretty great. I thought to myself, "This right here, this is reason enough to have a kid."

(so far unscathed by his insensitive mother)

Reading: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Playing: The King is Dead by the Decemberists

2011-09-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

Things I learned this weekend

by velocibadgergirl, age 30

Wearing cute shoes is a good way to feel sassy.

Riding in a limo is fun even when you aren't drinking.

Drag shows are hella awesome.

Drag queens are so fabulous I can't stand it. Most can dance circles around me, and will be wearing amazing fuck-me boots while doing it.

When I dance to rap music, the resulting photos include slight but still-shameful Inadvertent Duck Face.

My friends are the raddest, most fun chicks a girl could hope to know. Love you guys!

2011-09-09T22:31:00.001-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-09-07T23:22:00.004-05:00

Up the water spout

I think my job is inuring me to danger, to a...well, dangerous degree. Yesterday I was gathering supplies for an impending outreach program. I got some stuff out of a cabinet in the classroom, got some other stuff from the maintenance room, and then got some other stuff from another place. As I was leaning over to get something at my last stop, I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye, something on my arm. I turned to look, and there was a goddamn spider crawling across my upper arm, just below the sleeve of my shirt. Now, it wasn't what I would call a huge spider, because a month or two ago I went out into the lobby to capture a wolf spider, compared it to the standard-sized drinking glass in my hand and said, "I'm gonna need a bigger cup." (We kept her in a jar and fed her live bugs that we caught in the office, and were all very sad when she died.) But! With the legs, the spider was probably about the size of a quarter, maybe a bit bigger, so you might well call it huge. In any case, there was a large-ish spider crawling on my person and my entire reaction was to turn my head a few inches to the right and blow the spider off my arm with a puff of air. I didn't even jump when I saw it, you guys. I think I'm becoming way too used to these sorts of things.

Reading: Hunting Unicorns by Bella Pollen

Playing: a Led Zeppelin mix

2011-09-04T23:59:00.000-05:00

This used to be my playground

I took Nico to the awesomely toddler-friendly park playground on Monday. (It has ramps instead of steps and is surrounded by a fence, plus all the slides and monkey bars are short.) We were only there for about half an hour and it was only our second visit, but he's asked about it every day since.

This playground was built on the site of my favorite childhood playground, which was the most fantastic pre-safety-standards 1970s / 1980s playground of all time. It had two really tall slides, fireman poles, metal climbing gyms, concrete animals to climb on / crawl under, and this big silver triangular thing with an unclear purpose. It was huge, pitched at an impossibly steep angle, and got really hot in the sun. We always approached it via a running start and tried to get momentum to carry us to the top. I never made it, though I think one of my cousins did once. I'm more than a little bummed about that amazing playground being razed to build one that big kids probably find ridiculously dull, but I also kind of love that Nico loves the new incarnation. I suspect we'll be spending a lot of time there this Fall.

2011-09-02T06:46:00.000-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-09-01T23:08:00.002-05:00

Miscellania

The leaves are starting to fall from the trees at work, just a little. I know it's because it hasn't rained much and the trees are just thirsty, but it gives me hope that autumn is coming. Meanwhile, tomorrow's forecast high of 101 degrees laughs in my face.

Are you ever seized with random moments of regret for objects you let pass you by without snatching them up, or things you had but didn't hang onto but should've? I found an empty turtle shell once, the time I volunteered at my old beloved summer camp. I left it at my cousin's house in the country because it was still a little funky, and someone threw it out. Tonight, out of nowhere, I was filled with chagrin that I didn't just bring the shell home to my own house and leave it out in the yard somewhere until it was non-smelly. What a waste...I'll probably never find another whole shell like that again.

Nico knows all of the letters of the alphabet now, at least all the capitals. According to my mom, he repeatedly ~~demands~~ requests that she sing the "ay cee song" while pointing to the letters on his ABC puzzle. While she sings, he spins in a circle and then staggers like a very small drunk. When he's not making himself dizzy, he has learned to run across the house, tiny legs taking comically tiny steps. He can also walk backward and I know it's a cliche but, man...when did my bitty baby turn into this big, vibrant, beautiful, chattering boy?

I have three days in a row off with both my boys this weekend, for the first time in I don't know how long. We don't have any special plans for the weekend proper (see forecast temperature of 101 degrees), but on Monday we're taking Nico on his very first amusement park / water park trip. I'm pretty good at keeping my expectations in check and not getting bent out of shape when Nico is nonplussed by experiences I was sure he'd enjoy, but I really (REALLY) hope he likes it. Anyone else have fancy plans for the holiday?

2011-08-29T23:48:00.001-05:00

Things

A thing I thought I'd love but don't

My mom has a pair of off-brand Croc-type clogs that I wore the entire week we lost power in an ice storm and stayed with my parents. I love them and have wanted to steal them ever since, so when actual Crocs went on sale on zulily a few weeks ago, I snapped up a pair. Everyone I know who likes Crocs swears on their comfort, and I even have a friend who only wears Croc shoes of various kinds. Anyway, my Crocs came in the mail and much to my dismay, I do not love them. They pinch and there's some weird texture on the insoles that kind of bites into the soles of my feet. So they're going back and I shall remain sadly free of ugly but comfortable shoes.

A thing I thought I'd hate but don't

I finally decided to try the Diva Cup and even though I was immensely skeptical, I think I might end up loving it. It's too early in our relationship to say for sure, but I'm optimistic.

A thing I like but don't know why

I've started watching Mad Men on Netflix and though I cannot begin to explain why, I really like it. Nothing even happens, and yet I continue to watch. A mystery.

A thing I read and liked

It took me a long time to read it, but I ended up really liking The Mermaid Garden by Santa Montefiore. I also enjoyed Laurie Notaro's new one, which I ripped through in about three days.

A thing I watched and liked

MB and I had dinner with friends this weekend and watched Guillermo del Toro's The Orphanage afterward. It was really lovely, satisfying creepy, and had a nice twist ending that I liked a lot.

A thing that makes me wistful

Two people I know with kids almost exactly Nico's age are expecting another baby. Part of me feels sad and wishes we ready for that step. Part of me is saying For God's sake, woman, you haven't even weaned the first one yet! For all his gangly limbs and newfound independence, Nico really is quite a little guy yet. I suppose I'll know when it's time to try for another, right? But still...sigh.

Reading: Forever by Maggie Stiefvater

Playing: Sublime, but only when Nico's not in the car

2011-08-28T22:03:00.003-05:00

I'm gonna start calling it Win-terest

A week or so ago a friend of a friend posted on facebook that she was going out over the weekend to buy an oil drip pan to use as a kid's magnet board. MB and I had decided only days before that we wanted to buy a magnetic dry erase board for Nico's playroom so he'd have a place to play with his letter and number magnets (we have a stainless fridge). Intrigued, I posted to request more info and she replied with a Pinterest link to this. My love for Pinterest is assured, now, because of how great this turned out:

We got the pan at Walmart for ten bucks. Ten bucks! The white board we considered buying last weekend was eight dollars and was only 16x20. The installation was a bit tricky because none of our drill bits were sharp enough to drill through the pan. MB ended up punching a starter hole with a nail and then tapping the screw in with a hammer to make the hole big enough.* He put a hole in each corner and then one at top and bottom center. We attached it to the wood paneling in the playroom, so we were able to just drive the screws directly into the wall. If you're attaching one to an actual drywall wall, you may want to look into drywall screw mount thingies or Velcro or hanging hooks or something.

I am totally pumped about this and so pleased that it worked out pretty much exactly as I envisioned. Nico seemed quite excited, too, and thus all the other photos I have of him trying it out are a little blurry:

Reading: It Looked Different on the Model by Laurie Notaro

Playing: The King is Dead by the Decemberists

*that's what she said

2011-08-26T22:23:00.002-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-08-25T00:06:00.002-05:00

Typical

I'm posting as part of Ramble Ginger's typical day link-up dealie. My typical Tuesdays - Fridays go something like this:

5:20 AM  MB's alarm goes off and he gets up to shower (he reports to work at 6:00 AM). At this point, my life becomes a nested set of if / then statements: If Nico stays asleep (or wakes up but is happy to play quietly in his crib), then I get to go back to sleep. If Nico wakes up fussing, then I get him and bring him back to bed with me. If he falls alseep on my chest, then I get to nap with him (my favorite). If he doesn't, then his choices are to hang out on the bed or to go and play with his toys in his room. If he chooses the play in his room option, then sometimes I get to go back to sleep for a while (second favorite).

7:13 AM  my alarm goes off

7:30 AM - 7:45 AM  I actually get out of bed, with varying degrees of speed depending on whether or not I'm late.

7:45 - 8:00 AM  brush teeth / wash face / put on work clothes / change Nico's diaper...there are immense benefits to being a girl who wears her hair in a bun every day and doesn't own any makeup.

8:00 - 8:15 AM  Put Nico in his high chair and give him a bowl of Kix, goldfish, and rice puffs. Throw lunch items I assembled the night before into my lunch box. Give dog his "family is leaving, you are staying" slice of cheese (He used to be crated during the day, and he got a slice of cheese as a treat if he went into his crate when he was told. He came to associate the cheese with staying behind and behaving, so we still give it to him so he knows he's supposed to stay behind and behave. On the rare occasion that I forget the cheese, he shames me with the force of his mournful expression.) Let Nico pick two trucks to take for the day.

8:15 - 8:30 AM  Drive Nico to my parents' house, where he'll eat breakfast and be dressed for the day. Drive to work.

8:30 AM  Eat some kind of portable breakfast at work (banana, leftover biscuit, granola bar, etc). If I don't have a morning program, I usually check my email, voicemail, and facebook before starting whatever tasks I have on my list for the day. If I do have a program, I make sure all supplies and paperwork are pulled and get ready to start at 9:00

9:00 - 11:30 AM  Present program or do miscellaneous work stuff

11:30 AM - noon  Eat lunch. If I was on time, I eat in the kitchen and read. If I need to make up some time, I eat at my desk.

12:00 - 2:00 PM  Usually miscellaneous work tasks, rarely a program, sometimes a meeting

2:00 - 3:00 PM  the slowest hour of every day, often spent bullshitting with the guy who sits across from me

3:00 - 5:00 PM  If I have things to do, this portion of the day flies by so that I barely get done. If I don't, it's not too slow and I try to finish up odds and ends for the next day.

5:00 - 5:30 PM  Pick Nico up, head home (Unless it's Wednesday. On Wednesday we eat at Mom & Dad's, go to swimming lessons, and get home around 7:30.)

5:30 - 6:30 PM  Dinner, setting up Nico's play yard, changing clothes, etc

6:30 - 8:00 PM  time we try to give pretty much exclusively to Nico, though sometimes there are chores that have to be done

8:00 - 8:30  Nico's bedtime - brush teeth, pjs, bedtime stories, nursing, songs, into the crib

8:30 - midnight  pick up Nico's toys, do laundry or dishes or other chores, pack lunch for the next day, watch Netflix with MB, footle on the internet, maybe write a blog post, possibly fall asleep on the couch, eventually realize I've stayed up far too late

12:00 - 12:45 AM  shower!

1:00 AM  go to bed, for the love of God

2011-08-24T08:30:00.001-05:00

for Gabriel

(He would have been two today.)

2011-08-22T22:47:00.000-05:00

Ho ho ho

My message board girls did a Christmas in July exchange for the second year in a row, and I got my package today.

That cupcake pouch is the cutest tiny manicure set of all time. I suppose I could've taken the silica pouch out before I took the photo:

Nico got a present, too! I loved the frog wrapping paper:

Hilarious levels of toddler skepticism:

I have about six photos of him, and in all of them he's wearing the same expression and is removing a teeny shred of paper. Eventually he got it open:

Secret Santa is always fun, but something about it being in the summer, in a season that's usually without random giftage, makes it even better. If you have a passel of awesome internetty friends (or even local friends), I heartily recommend it.

2011-08-19T22:12:00.000-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-08-17T23:42:00.002-05:00

Mostly house-y stuff

An old friend gave Nico a really amazing gift this past weekend:

She created this freehand after receiving a bag of colorful scraps that reminded her of the wings of the butterfly from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. (I keep telling her she needs to start an Etsy shop, because this is just one of the many amazing things she's made.) I posted an admiring comment on an early in-progress facebook picture, and she later surprised me by deciding to give it to Nico upon completion. Since Nico doesn't use blankets yet (and won't even tolerate a sheet across his feet when he's in my bed) and since, hello, this thing is AMAZING, I think I'm going to hang it on the wall above his crib. Does anyone have any tips on hanging a quilt as art? It's pretty small as quilts go, only 37" across the top. Some cursory googling indicates that I should probably stitch a pocket onto the back to slide a dowel through, and then use the dowel as support for the hanging mechanism. My friend Rachel suggested using a hollow rod so that I can run a ribbon or invisible nylon line through the center and have the rod completely hidden behind the quilt. Would a piece of small-diameter PVC pipe work? I love this idea because it wouldn't require a lot of hardware on the wall, and because if Nico wants to use it as a blanket someday, it'll be simple to remove the pocket.

Advise me (again), internets

MB and I have been talking a bit lately about what room we want to redo next, on the hypothetical future day when we have a little bit of money set aside. I think we're going to address the living room first since our current couch has a spot the size of a loaf of bread where the upholstery has worn through to the stuffing, but I've also been daydreaming about redoing our little half bath off the kitchen. It's got the fantastic original 1940 tile and sink, which we aren't going to touch, but the wallpaper with pastel blue seashells must go. So what color would you paint a very small bathroom tiled in white, black, and a very light gray? What curtains would you put in there after painting?

Here's the best photo I have of the tile, since I'm too lazy to go take and upload a new one at the moment...the tiles are pretty small:

Gamechanger

I can't remember who, but one of my facebook friends posted a video the other day with a tutorial on how to fold a fitted sheet so it doesn't look like a big wadded-up ball. I tried it tonight, and damned if it didn't work like a charm. I love that the first comment under the video is "Shit...he's already married."

Braggy McBraggerson

Nico "reading" a picture book:

And now, bedtime!

Reading: The Mermaid Garden by Santa Montefiore (Yes, still, OMG.)

Playing: Sublime

2011-08-13T23:02:00.001-05:00

Beware the cantaloupe!

My boss drives about 200 miles of middle-of-nowhere highway on the weekends and has been bringing back great roadside produce for a couple of weeks now. He gave me this HUGE cantaloupe this week, since Nico likes them. We hadn't finished the last huge roadside cantaloupe he brought, so the new one was sitting on the shelf unit by the fridge, uncut. It was fine when we put it over there on Tuesday. To my knowledge it was fine Wednesday. It seems either Wednesday night or while we were at work Thursday morning it went horribly, aggressively bad and leaked awful rotten cantaloupe juice all over the shelf and the floor. I was unaware that cantaloupes are actually evil, but it seems that they are.

There's no polite way to put this: when Nico and I got home from nursing group at 3:00, our entire kitchen smelled of unwashed crotch. After eyeballing the dog with great suspicion, I realized it was the cantaloupe. And Nico had passed out asleep in the car and he only stays asleep on someone's lap in that situation, so I ended up sitting on the couch with him for like 2 hours, smelling this horrid crotch melon smell. MB wanted to go out to dinner, and once he was home and Nico was up I only had time to throw the melon out and wipe up the juice, but not to clean under the shelf thingie or mop the floor. So when we got back, the house still smelled like crotch. After Nico was in bed I spent 45 minutes moving everything off the shelves, wiping them down, cleaning stuff from the shelves that got splattered, and sweeping / swiffering / steam mopping the floor. Then I burned incense and a candle with the kitchen window open.

Okay, you're thinking, no biggie...everyone encounters a rotten melon every now and then. But oh, my friends, it gets worse. Friday at work, I went to get my lunch out of the fridge. I moved a cantaloupe on the top shelf while looking for my apple, and discovered that it and its identical buddy had both turned semi-liquefied overnight. Apparently it was a suicide pact of some kind. And thus, for the second time in 24 hours, I got to mop up nasty crotch-y rotten melon juice. It seems I have done something to anger the cantaloupe gods. I'm not sure what I did but I assure you, I wholly regret it. Beware the cantaloupes, y'all. BEWARE.

2011-08-12T22:23:00.002-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-08-09T23:35:00.002-05:00

I think I might have ADD, but -- hey, a squirrel!

Okay, lame joke. And possibly offensive, except that I actually do have ADD and therefore feel like I'm entitled to a few jokes on the subject. Usually it's not that big a deal, except for nights like tonight, when I go to the grocery to pick up a few things and don't realize until the cashier has scanned my wine and ice cream and baby wipes and tomatoes that I don't have my wallet. Because it's in my bag. At my house. Gaaaaah. Luckily I live about five minutes from the store, but still. The whole debacle resulted in a grocery trip plus medicinal Starbucks after-trip that ate up an entire hour of my life. The M&M blast blondie was almost worth it, but not quite.

Pretend this is a cute segue

I signed up for this local playgroup message board a few months ago. I'm not sure why, other than I guess I like the idea of a playgroup. I probably should've known this was not my style of playgroup when the lead mom repeatedly referred to the members getting together to "share our most precious possessions...our children!" But I've been trying to give it a fair shot, despite rolling my eyes at their slightly over the top momthusiasm. They keep planning playdates only for 11 AM - 1 PM on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and then reminding everyone that we have to participate at least once a month to stay in the group. I replied to one of the reminder posts with a note that I supposed we'd be booted out of the group since I am always at work at those times, and the lead mom was nice enough to book a playdate for Monday morning. So of course I said we'd go, even though it was at a local version of Pump It Up, which I fully expected to be on par with Clara's recent Chuck E Cheese experience. Then all the playgroup people bailed on going, but I had psyched myself up for it and thought Nico might really like it, so we went anyway. (Are you laughing at me? I can hear you laughing.)

It wasn't circle-of-hell bad, though it was at this random murder-van warehouse in the middle of an industrial park out in BFE with no official signs or anything. And come to think of it, it was pretty hot in there with all the motors running on the inflatables. Really, though, not as bad as expected. I was on my guard against other people's shithead kids since a friend of mine had posted on facebook about two ridiculous encounters with other people's kids just this past weekend alone, but that also went better than expected. At one point, Nico was playing with these three random balls he'd found lying in the middle of the floor and an older toddler came up and took one of them right out of his hand. My poor sheltered solo-childcare-flyer only child, he literally watched the little boy walk up and looked curiously at his own hand as the child removed the ball from his grasp. Then the other kid took off and Nico pointed after him incredulously and shouted, "Ball?" Before I could think of what to say, the child's mother hustled him back over and made him return the pilfered item, informing him that "We do not take toys away." Mental high five, other mom! Later on a bossy little shithead kid did steal one of the balls while I was tossing them to Nico and ran around with it (not even playing with it, just carrying it around with him), but since we already had two, I decided to let that one go. I did keep my eye on that kid after that, though.

Oh, and the reason we were playing with balls at a bouncy place? Nico wanted nothing to do with the inflatables. I tried putting him in the special toddlers-only one and as soon as his feet touched it, he was all "What the blue hell is this nonsense?" and "This surface does not seem very stable, mother." He was obviously curious about the bigger slide thing they had, but every time I offered to help him climb it, he flipped out. Now I have an excuse not to go to bouncy houses for at least a few more months. I'll call that one a win, I think, even though I did pay $6 for my kid to spend 45 minutes throwing miniature foursquare balls and crawling through a plastic Little Tykes house. But hey! He did it in the presence of other children, so I can count it as social experience, right?

Wait just a minute, who is that grown-ass child wearing my son's clothes?

2011-08-07T23:22:00.003-05:00

Slightly shiny and new

I don't know if anyone else will notice, but MB overhauled my template this weekend and I think it looks pretty sharp. I toyed with the idea of really having him change it up, but in the end I decided I still really love the original masthead he made for me back in the day. The stuff he did change I like, and he also fixed a lot of backdoor html stuff that was apparently all wrong and so five years ago. If anything doesn't work, please let me know...I've been test-clicking stuff, but I don't usually visit my own blog as a reader, so I might be missing things.

Multimedia, hooray!

I think I mentioned before that we got rid of our cable package when my job situation changed at the beginning of the year. We got an Apple TV and a Netflix account and it has really worked out well. After a long string of mediocre-to-terrible (not-so) scary movies, we have finally hit on a few winners. First we watched this weird little indie movie called Ink which turned out to be much better than expected. It starts out with barely any exposition at all and gets weird right away, but if you stick with it, it pays off. There's one scene I really loved, which you can watch here if you don't mind a slight spoiler:

Then the other night I finally watched Winter's Bone and oh my hell, you guys. Literally gut-wrenching. I am not usually too affected by movies, but about halfway through I started feeling like I might throw up if it didn't end well. (It did, but it got much worse first.) It's an amazing film, but there's really not a scrap of happiness in it. It was scarier to me than any of the horror movies we've watched, just because it was so real and so bleak. Brilliant but possibly scarring, consider yourself warned.

Oh, and if you just want something fluffy and like slightly cheesy dance movies, there's a movie on Netflix instant called B-Girl that's actually highly decent.

Clearance wins

I have been really, really good about avoiding extraneous shopping lately, but I found some things at Barnes & Noble today that I could not pass up. For $2.24 each (75% off plus additional 10% member's discount), I got two 24-piece Very Hungry Caterpillar puzzles (this one and this one) and a small stuffed Max from Where the Wild Things Are to put away for Nico in a year or so, and also a really cool Dover clip art set of 1920s fashion for my dear friend Kate. I wanted to buy the clip art set a few weeks ago but couldn't afford it at 50% off (original price was $24.95), but at 85% off, I could definitely justify it. I can't wait to send it to her. Today's steals made me feel better about walking away from the fifteen clearance racks of baby / toddler clothes at BRU yesterday. I also had a little bit of money to spend on Nico and blew his car-crazy mind with this book, in which he has pointed out every set of wheels at least twice already.

In a bit of reverse-shopping, I dropped off two big boxes of stuff at a very cool consignment shop and got $20 back for stuff they've already sold for me. I could get used to getting paid to declutter my house.

Mayday, mayday, mayday

I am impossibly buried under the weight of my google reader and I don't know what to do. Every time I go in with the intention of culling my subscriptions, I end up wringing my hands and fretting and not deleting any. This is colossally dumb since I'm pretty sure very few of the bloggers I read even know I exist due to the fact that I have less time to comment than I do to read blogs. But seriously, how do you guys figure out who to cut and who to keep? Do you just mark all as read and leave things as they are? I've tried that a few times and I always just end up buried again. First world problems, I have them!

Just because

Today is MB's and my 7th wedding anniversary and also the 11th anniversary of the day we met. I tried to find a non-identity-revealing photo from our wedding day to post, but couldn't find any I liked. I did, however, rediscover one of my all-time favorite photos of Nico, taken a year ago this past week:

He's much cuter than me anyway, even seven-years-ago me. (Good Lord do we look young in our wedding photos, though.)

Reading: The Mermaid Garden by Santa Montefiore

Playing: Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes

2011-08-05T07:13:00.000-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-07-31T22:24:00.015-05:00

Adventure! Excitement! Geriatric cashiers!

Nico and I spent Saturday morning at the county fair and while I don't suppose it was the greatest adventure of our lives, I do feel it was a suitably enriching experience for his little brain. It was also hotter than Satan's nutsack, no lie. But Nico had a good time running around loose amid the tractors and rattling the pens of farm animals while I practiced not helicoptering him. We met up with Julia and Nathan and also with one of the mom / kid pairs from our nursing group, which definitely made the experience a lot more enjoyable for me. Maybe for Nico, too, but at this age it's hard to tell. He did take a three and a half hour nap afterward, which I take as a good sign. Anyway, pictures or it didn't happen:

I don't remember what he was looking at in this one,
but I love his "Say whaaaat?" expression.
"Hey, Nathan, watch me poke this goat."

There was a barrel train, pretty much the cutest thing ever.
The other two toddlers were thrilled. Mine? Skeptical as hell.
Cutest thing ever, though, yes?
(And he ended up liking it just fine once it started moving.)

This morning Nico got his 18-month photos taken, and I can't believe how much of a kid he's getting to be...barely any baby left!

After a post-modeling session nap, MB and Nico and I went out on our weekly grocery run. We ended up in the slowest checkout line in the history of the world. Seriously, it was brain-meltingly awful. Nico and I left MB to wait in line and went to return something, and I remember looking at the clock and it being 5:45. After our return was done I took Nico for a walk around the store, found a cute wooden puzzle I thought he'd like, stood in line to buy it in the jewelry department, and then went back to check on MB and found that only one person had been checked out since we left, 25 minutes earlier. ONE PERSON IN 25 MINUTES.

Thank the sweet baby Jesus that right after that, the chatty old lady cashier was replaced by a teenager and the line started moving, but Nico was already losing his shit (and so was I, let's be honest). And that's how I ended up kneeling on the floor of a Walmart (in capris, oh my God), helping my kid work a puzzle that I had bought and ripped open on the spot so he didn't burn the place to the ground with the force of his bored, tired toddler rage. Of all the things my pre-kid self swore I'd never do (along with "whip out a boob in front of God and everybody," which I think we took care of within three or four hours of his birth), "kneel on the floor of a Walmart in shorts" was probably pretty high on the list. In the moment it felt like a big profound metaphor for motherhood, but unless I come down with a weird rash tomorrow, I'm going to admit that it wasn't really that bad.

Tomorrow we have a play date, a lunch date, and Nico's 18-month well child appointment, so all in all it should be a much more hygienic day. Happy (almost) August, everybody!

Reading: The Mermaid Garden by Santa Montefiore

Playing: Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons

2011-07-29T21:47:00.002-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-07-25T23:37:00.000-05:00

Bang Bang Bang

Decency

I had a package that needed to be mailed today, so Nico and I took care of it on the way to our play date this morning. I figured 10 AM on a Monday was a pretty safe time to go to the post office, but boy was I wrong. When we arrived there was a non-moving line of about a dozen people. We ended up waiting there for at least 15 minutes, creeping slowly through the line. Nico was squirmy so I risked putting him down. He actually did really well, sitting on the floor to play with his trucks and staying with me as the line moved. At one point he started rolling one of the trucks to me and asking me to roll it back. This worked a few times, then he overshot and the truck went several feet past me. A woman about my age in line behind us pushed the car back, and then continued to push it back and forth with Nico for a few minutes. When it rolled past her, she turned to the nicely-dressed older man behind her and said, "I guess it's your turn now!" and then he rolled the car back and forth with Nico once or twice. So many stories on the internet are about people being intolerant toward children in public, so it was a really great surprise to have people in a busy, irritating, long-wait situation be so nice to my kid, just for the sake of being nice.

Regression

Nico seems to be suffering from some sleep regression lately, and though I keep telling myself it's a phase, it's a phase, it's got to be a phase, when he wakes up screaming at 3:30 in the morning, it feels like this is never going to end, oh my hell, send help. He's been a good sleeper for ages, and usually when he does wake up a little Ferber-approved pat on the behind is all he needs to settle himself back down. For a long time, he didn't even need the butt-pats and would soothe himself to sleep within a minute or two of waking up during the night. Now, though, we're into the realm of crying so hard while I'm in the shower that he almost barfs before I get out and hear him and hurry to his rescue. And as we've discussed, anything that involves the potential for barf is not a-okay with me. I guess I'm not really going anywhere with this, just trying to remind myself that it's a phase (it had better be a phase) and on the bright side, at least if I have to go in and rock him back to sleep I get an extra limp-limbed curly-headed warm-baby cuddle.

Rabbit hole

I was singing to Nico after the aforementioned near-barf incident and reflecting that about half the songs I know for lullaby purposes are religious in origin. That got me thinking, and I couldn't seem to stop. I was raised Catholic but don't consider myself Catholic now, or even Christian. I don't have any specific life-changing story or reason, I just don't find church spiritually fulfilling or feel particularly connected to God when I'm there. I do enjoy the tradition of, say, midnight Christmas Mass, but I think that's more for the nostalgia and the memories of Christmases past with my family. MB was raised Christian but as far as I can tell his parents sort of bounced around between various denominations. Some more information that may or may not be relevant: almost no one in our immediate families goes to church, either. We don't pray before meals though grace is said before holiday meals with both extended families. We don't read the Bible or display religious things in the house or say bedtime prayers.

Now that I have a kid, I sometimes wonder if he'll miss out on something if we don't start taking him somewhere for church. I don't for one second believe that he needs church to be a good, moral person, but I wonder if (properly liberal and inclusive) religion would give him another lens through which to view the world as he grows. After all, as a friend pointed out, he'll never get all the Biblical reference in Shakespeare if he never reads the Bible. On the other hand, I went to a K-8 Catholic school, and I didn't get most of the Biblical references in Shakespeare, either. I still got an A in the class. I will admit another fear that I have: I'm afraid if we don't take him to church, he'll fall under the thrall of one of those creepy culty teen-proselytizing megachurches when he's a teenager. (It's not an entirely ungrounded fear; it happened to one of my cousins in high school, though she seems mostly normal now.) I suppose I'm risking preachy comments in order to ask if any of you out there are like us -- God-believing but not big God-in-the-home folks who don't take their kids to church -- and how you feel about the whole church / no church issue. I'm curious, is all.

Reading: The Mermaid Garden by Santa Montefiore

Playing: Lovestrong by Christina Perri

2011-07-22T23:22:00.000-05:00

One point five

Nico turned 18 months old last Friday, and though I had hoped to mark the occasion with a masterful and sweet milestone letter, I failed utterly. Friday I was tired and figured I'd do it over the weekend. Saturday was one of the most challenging days we've ever had, and I figured I probably wasn't in the right mental space to write a sappy letter right after having exceeded my Cranky Shrieking Tolerance and fled the house in search of silence and an ice cream cone. Monday I moved 3800 pounds of bricks with my dad in the afternoon while it was 108 degrees outside. And so it went, until I got to today, a week after the blessed occurrence, with still nothing to post.

While Nico and I ate a dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches this evening, I thought about the letter I was going to write, how I wanted to brag about him eating real people food and how well he's doing, about his cute new words, about how sometimes he's challenging but he's also awesome. And then, about halfway through his sandwich, apparently the cough / frog in the throat caused by previously trying to hork down a giant piece of crust and gagging on it caught up with him and Nico proceeded to barf up everything he'd eaten since we got home (to wit: half a grilled cheese sandwich, half an orange, copious amounts of Goldfish crackers).

And so after changing him into a new outfit and trying to comfort him, I spent the evening rinsing chunks of pre-masticated grilled cheese off his clothes and the towels we used to clean up the mess (though I did think seriously about throwing away his pants and bib and never speaking of it again) while poor MB -- after working a 12-hour day -- disassembled Nico's entire high chair so it could be cleaned. Because, you see, Nico has a charming vintage high chair, lovingly sanded and refinished by a friend who upcycles furniture, carefully re-upholstered by his grandma and myself, a chair with umpteen nooks and crannies, a chair that utterly lacks a convenient removable washable cover. Meanwhile poor Nico was sequestered behind his baby fence, wailing because he just wanted to cuddle and both his parents were busy with barf detail. Oh, and at one point I dropped one of the high chair bolts down the garbage disposal. At least it wasn't running at the time. Needless to say it was a spectacular disaster of an evening.

You know what, though? Even after a night like we had, even after having to mop up barf (which has always, always been my Achilles heel when it comes to caring for kids), even after a week of whining and varying degrees of toddler assholery, after all that, I still couldn't be more grateful or more pleased to be this dude's mother.

And maybe that's the lesson I'm supposed to learn this month, that even when things get dicey, I'm still incredibly, stupidly lucky and I still love each day with my crazy, sometimes incredibly gross little family.

Nico, you're a true toddler now, constantly coming up with new words and new ideas, tearing around on your own two feet, exploring and testing and pushing and learning and sometimes falling. You're absolutely car-crazy, you still love books, you often ask to wear shoes and throw a fit when it comes time to change your diaper. You eat fruit and sometimes vegetables and chicken fingers and cheese and cheese sandwiches and Cheez Its and Kix and goldfish crackers and lasagna and yogurt. You sometimes say "More, peese" when you want something and sometimes just unleash an unholy volley of whining. You recently started saying "library" and "pirate ship" and "airplane" and "hippo" and it's all so cute that I died and then came back to life just to hear you say them again. You give hugs and kisses and high fives, you can count to two and identify a dozen different shapes, but you also hit us quite a lot and always guess blue when asked "what color is that?" even when it's definitely not blue.

(You're right, though...that one is blue.)
You're sassy but also sweet, smart but impossibly stubborn, sometimes a little too clever for your own good (like the other night, when you climbed out of your crib, oh my God, I'm so not ready for that). Occasionally you act like a very small mad dictator and I wonder how we're ever going to make it through your toddler years. You're getting to be such a big boy and as much as I revel in it, I also sneak into your room sometimes after you're in bed just to see you in your most baby-like moments, sleeping with your butt up in the air and your curls all wild in the dark. You're by turns impossible and funny and fantastic and I love you, I love you, I love you.

Thank you for being awesome, thank you for being mine, and above all thank you for being you. I love you best of all the babies that ever were, even when you laugh at my misfortune.

Love,
Mama

2011-07-15T19:54:00.002-05:00

Photo Friday

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2011-07-14T23:46:00.000-05:00

Bullet points with butterfly wings

I really like my new job and kind of hate that I can't say much about it. I will tell you that summer camp has been eating my brain, but it's over after tomorrow and I'm optimistic that I'll make a full recovery. I took your advice and approached the dad half of that nice couple at swimming lessons plus another friendly mom with a child of appropriate age about playdates. Both parties were extremely receptive, so we'll see if anything comes of it. Even if we never get together, at least I'll know that I tried.

And I realized just now that I never posted anything about 4th of July weekend. It was awesome, we had a great time visiting MB's family, and I have a bunch of pictures I should post. I'm up too late as it is, though, with one more day of brainsucking summer camp awaiting me, so let's move on to the bullet points:

Packrattery

According to some people who seem to want to make the rules on the internet, I shouldn't watch Hoarders lest I want to be a horrible evil rubbernecking exploiter. But I do watch it for it's trainwrecky can't-look-away properties, and because I swear it actually is teaching me some stuff. Maybe it's psychosomatic, like the time my dad saw one too many commercials about arteriosclerosis medication and announced that he needed to see a doctor because he just knew he had it, but I see some of the hoarder-type habits in myself sometimes. And I do tend to be really motivated to work on my decluttering project after watching a few episodes. That whole thing is actually going really well. I haven't made it to 50 things on my list yet, but the basement is the emptiest it's been since we moved into this house.

Party animal

Nico was invited to my friend Julia's little son Nathan's second birthday party this past weekend and we had a pretty good time. MB and I tried and tried to get Nico to nap beforehand and he wouldn't so of course he fell asleep in the car before we even made it out of our neighborhood. He ended up sleeping in Nathan's bed for the first hour of the party, which actually worked out well since he missed the opening of gifts and therefore wasn't tempted to try and swipe any of Nathan's really awesome new cars. He was extremely clingy upon waking, but Julia's mom is some kind of toddler whisperer and played trucks with him for a few minutes, and before long he was running around through the entire party of adults with no trace of bashfulness. We thought he'd enjoy playing in Nathan's awesome kiddie pool, but he was much more interested in running around the driveway and pointing at all the cars. I think he had fun, though, doing his own thing. He did really enjoy working Nathan's new puzzle, and as the only non-adult guest he made out like a bandit with party favors, coming home with a Toy Story mylar balloon, a Mickey Mouse plate, and an orange pickup truck for his Tonka fleet.

Kicking and screaming

I finally joined Pinterest and Google Plus, though I admit I probably don't have much time for the first and I don't really understand the purpose of the second...isn't facebook enough?

Earlier, at my house:

MB: Want me to roll the car? Can you say roll?

N: Roll?

MB: That was a great drift. You'll do that one day, buddy. In a real car.

V: No.

MB: For money.

V: No.

MB: And pink slips.

V: No.

MB: In Tokyo!

V: NO. Well, in videogames. Maybe.

I shouldn't have laughed, but I totally did

One would think I'd have learned something from the great wipe debacle of '11, but apparently I did not:

Sadness & woe

Nico helped himself to that whole box of tissues while I was baking brownies to share with BoMB and his awesome girlfriend. They're leaving tomorrow morning for Memphis so she can start her PhD, and as happy as I am for them, I am pretty much bereft. We hang out with them at least once a week, Nico loves them, and they're just all-around good friends...and now they're going away for at least five years. Of course they'll visit, and I hope we'll visit them sometimes. But still, FIVE YEARS. Bereft, I say!

Reading: For Matrimonial Purposes by Kavita Daswani

Playing: Lovestrong by Christina Perri

2011-07-10T22:37:00.002-05:00

Puzzling

2011-07-08T22:42:00.001-05:00

Photo Friday

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