UPDATE: The Epic Weekend

I will have words to go with this soon......and more pictures.  Bad pictures, but pictures.  Photographer needed.  Faint of heart need not apply.

UPDATE:  Last weekend my bonus daughter came with my two pretend grand babies.  It was so nice having them!  One of the things that meant to most to me was when she asked the boys about their homework.  Then she made them drag it out, asked for their notes, and fired up her laptop to try to figure out how in the world they were supposed to get the answers for Algebra.  She's going to be a teacher and you should have seen her in teacher mode.  Her cute little outfit with a pretty scarf around her neck, her 7 month old nestled beside her, teenage boys surrounding her as she takes supervision.  The teenage boys who have watched her grow as a mother and no longer tell her that they don't have to mind her, because she is not their mother.  One of them tried that once and she came right back at them, telling them that she was A mother and they better get ready right then because THEIR mother had told her to pick them up. It's so rewarding to see kids become adults in all the phases.  And funny! 

It did my heart good, and as everyone was occupied,  Abigail and I went to feed some  horses at a friend's house.  We fed the horses and then Abigail started skipping along, following a cat. This led us clear around the pond with frequent heart stopping moments (for us older girls) as  the cat, followed closely by Abigail darted into timber on one side or to the edge of the pond on the other. 

This friend happened to be the one that had a boy within 4 months of The Rock Star and a girl six weeks before I had The Beautiful Redhead, so we are old partners in child rearing and supervision.  Even split custody, come to think of it.  Her children were the sweet things that ate the cold spaghetti on my birthday that year I was in such a horrible mood.

So you will forgive us if we were surprised at how one small 4 year old and a cat could exhaust us by the time we were only half way round the pond!

It's one of the mysteries our lives.

Abigail skipped and hopped and started to climb trees that had thorns all over them.  We meandered.  I had forgotten how nice it is to meander around, with no real plan and no time frame.  But before long we were meandering and she started darting around.  Much faster.  We had to pick up the pace substantially and it reminded me of an old Mills Brothers song, The Jones Boy.  I know it's a song about being in love, but it has just the right pace to illustrate our journey, which was turning into a rather longer one that we had bargained for.  She tried to climb through the fence because she wanted to go see the troll that my friend told her lived in the "tunnel" under the highway that was within sight from the pond bank.

That's when we decided to distract her by letting her throw stuff in the pond.  She started with grasses, worked her way up to sticks and had to be stopped when she started in on logs.  We stopped her mainly because we didn't want to have to jump in the pond.  We knew we could save her if she went in, it wasn't that. It was just that it was cold and we didn't want to have to deal with the dirty clothes, or any screaming that might be involved.  Small children can scream in an octave that paralyses me and I believe could break glass.  I noticed that little Rosie already has a delighted, very high octave sound that almost brings me to my knees.  As I get older I cannot hear my brakes squeal, apparently, but this sound comes through loud and clear.  God, could I trade this?  I would much rather be able to hear my brakes squeal and not hear this sound. Please?  I'm willing to give up something, it's an even trade, isn't it?

Anyway.....

At this point we were marveling aloud at how this could stress us out so bad.

We decided it was because she wasn't ours.

It seems like more responsibility, somehow, crazy as that sounds when I say it out loud!  Back when the kids were our own we would have just figured on the dirty laundry, and them learning on their own to stay away from the edge of the pond.  It was just a part of our lives, then.  

We decided being older had it's advantages.

Once she saw some fish, we decided we should catch one.

This was looking good to us, also, I admit, since it would mean that we could corral her on the dock, not to mention rest for awhile.

Abigail is just at the age where every time she says something she acts it out.  Her eyes sparkle and she gets very animated and she puts her little (getting knuckles instead of dimples, no) hands up and uses them to enhance her story.  She has special effects!  If it's a happy story she ends it frequently by throwing her hands up, jumping, and twirling around. She also dances all the time now.  It's a combination of ballet and interpretive dance, it looks like.

 She was fascinated by the worms, leery of the hook, and just as impatient as her Mimi when it came time to wait for the fish to bite.  This is all part of my ongoing "nurture vs. nature" observation, ahem.

I want to take this moment to publicly claim the right, for both of us old gals, of Abigail's first fish.  It seemed to be, and I forgot to ask her mom later,  but we got pictures and I am claiming it.  We worked hard for this and we are good!  We didn't even let the line out, just dangled it far enough into the water so that we could see the fish bite.

It took us several tries and even more worms, at that, but Abigail was going to catch a fish if I had to hook it under the belly.  It was her destiny, with a little help from her Mimi.

One eventually bit enough for us to catch it the right way and I would give ANYTHING if we had pictures of  not just her face, but us old gals, too, because we were all SO HAPPY!  Abigail was laughing hysterically with her little fists right up by her face.  She could hardly contain herself.  Same went for us!

We showed her the fish.  It was a perch.  We showed her how to hold it, how it could hurt her, and even how it would flop around if you dropped it.  We didn't do that on purpose, it just happened and we made it part of the lesson.  We are good at that. ;)

She wanted to keep it and eat it for breakfast!  Well, it was just a baby, and we shouldn't have kept it at all, but the fish was put in a baggie so Abigail could show it off.

Our adventure was ended, but our memories were made.  Even somewhat documented!

Next morning it took me 3 tries before I remembered everything when I was packing them up to take them back to their mom.

I thought I was ready and Abigail said "Where's my fish?  Is it up there?"

I sighed, asked forgiveness in advance from her sweet mother, and went back for the fish.

Her mother was dismayed to see that we had remembered it, but took it like a champ.

The next day I got a text from her:  "Btw we left that fish in the car by accident and it stunk bad when we realized what the horrible smell was!! Lmao"

What a woman. She already has learned that some of the best memories are the ones that smell the worst!

I will do a part 2 for this about Rosie and  our time when we had to get up and go home and Abigail said her legs hurt, refused to get up, and said she needed to stay here for a long time until she was better.

I so love that child.  Can you tell? 

And the baby?  The one we named Adriana and call Rosie Posie?  We got some time alone too!  It was delicious!

Oy.....

I feel just like Erma Bombeck.

After cleaning the house in preparation to have two adorable little girls for a couple of nights, I had also cleaned out the refrigerator.  

Into the trash went the leftovers from a ham we had at Easter (mostly just the bone, which I will never give to the dogs because I'm afraid they will choke and die).  Into bed went I without taking out the trash.  I just totally forgot, as did both the boys.

When I got up this morning the dogs had rooted through the trash, as dogs will do when we forget and leave it out, and all that was left of the leftover ham was a bunch of tin foil pieces.

And we were running late as it was.

So we made a general "sweep" of the house and did not find any evidence of the bone.

The dogs treat bones completely differently.  Shadow destroys and devours every single bit.  Jack just gnaws on his and spends most of his time trying to keep it safe from Shadow.  This is all futile on Jack's part, as Shadow pretty much runs the show around here.  No one cares enough to argue with her.  Frankly, I want to be Shadow.  She is one of my heroes.

Whether the bone is hidden in some special secret place or has been devoured and might kill them remains unknown.

So when my girls get here tonight, I guess we will just consider this the Easter egg hunt we didn't have?  Oh yeah!  Let's go with that!  While we're at it, let's go with hoping there is no prize to be found!  And that the dogs don't die, of course!

You know, people are always telling me they don't know how I do it.  I don't know either, I just do it.  I have done things that I never dreamed I would do, I have done things I hope I never have to do again, and I have done many, many things that I couldn't even have dreamed up, should I have had the chance.   If there is some way of getting out of doing it, please contact me at once.

AT ONCE I SAY!!

The "birthday" thing...or, Peace At Last

Birthdays.  How they change, one might even say "evolve", as we grow older......

Take my seventh birthday,  I remember this year in particular because I had gotten the idea (possibly from learning to read with Dick and Jane) that you got lots of presents at birthday parties.  LOTS!!  This year I did not consider the amount of presents I got "enough" and expressed my disappointment to my mother.  She quickly informed me that I was ungrateful and threatened to take away some of them immediately, which made me cry, which made her swat my bottom, which made us both have to take an exceedingly long time in the bathroom.  This made people curious, who then stared at me when I got out, (or so I was convinced), which upset me, which made my mother think I was pouting, which led to another "talking to", in which she did not swat me.  She verbally shamed me instead, teaching me two good lessons: Always be grateful and control your face because no telling what you will have people thinking..  One of these I have mastered.  

Not the last one.  

In any case, the day of my birth was already fraught with possible disappointments and control issues for me from that day forward.

The years between then and now have flown.  No, really.  Except for the years when I had small children, and I don't even remember those at all, so I'm not sure they even count.  If I don't remember them and there are no pictures to prove they happened  (because who, other than the mom, ever takes a picture?), they don't count, right? 

I remember my 38th, during which my mother was deathly sick with cancer, and I was in a very dark place.  Along came my birthday, (like I needed THAT!) and I was in a really, really bad mood.  I mean, dark, people, and I don't think I had said anything mean, but when I am in a dark mood I don't have to say anything.  People just know.  This year the only people around were my children and my best friend's children, who were almost exactly to the day the same age as The Rock Star and The Beautiful Redhead.  Such a dark mood was I in that I fixed spaghetti for supper (of course I had to fix supper) and I was in such a bad mood and not paying good attention that I served those children spaghetti with cold sauce that I had poured into the pan but never warmed up.  I did not know the difference until I sat down to eat, last (of course), and looked around at those precious kids who either loved me so much, or were so scared that I was going to kill them, that they had quietly and quickly downed that spaghetti, with COLD SAUCE, and were not going to say one word about it!  It made me feel so good (because they were such good kids!) and so bad (because I was such a horrible, scary, bad cooking biotch!) that I cried.  After I cried, which I should have just gotten out of the way and saved us all time, then we all laughed, once they knew it was safe for that kind of thing again, and I was so very sorry because I had temporarily forgotten the hard learned lessons of 7: to always be grateful and control my face!  And I vowed that I would never forget it again.

The next year I did much better.  Partly because it was my first birthday without my mother, partly because I had long ago gotten over the "birthday" thing, and partly because my 12 year old daughter, who did not cook, had made me an angel food cake.  I was so surprised and touched that I cried.   I asked her if she had gotten a box mix to do it and she said "I could have gotten a mix??????"  She has always been so wonderful like that, although she has never seemed to know it.  It's part of her charm, but mostly I was just so touched that she had thought about it and stepped in so that at least one year I did not have to make my own cake.  I do not like angel food cake, actually, and she didn't know that either, but if you don't think I ate that cake you would be greatly mistaken.  That was a good one. It's all I remember about that birthday, and it is enough.

A lot of birthday memories involving tears.  Tears of disappointment, anger, gratefulness, laughter.

Last week I celebrated my 48th.  I've gotten over wishing no one knew and I've gotten good at graciously accepting congratulations.  I gave up on wishes years ago, but this year I actually celebrated it for the first time in a very long time.

Sometime last winter I started feeling better.  Better than what?  Better than a tired, sad, jaded, cynical woman who would rather be hibernating.  I don't know if it's a hormonal change or just the end of deep grieving, and I suppose it doesn't make any difference.

Lately, I have been able to go out with friends and actually enjoy doing whatever we have done without wishing I could just go home after about 20 minutes.  This is like a miracle!

Just the other day it dawned on my that my wardrobe is comprised of dark, somber colors, as are most of the furnishings of my house.  There is a good reason for my clothes to be dominated by black, because I have wisely given up the struggle to eliminate black dog hair.  I've simply embraced it because it takes less energy that way.  Besides, I like black!  Black is always appropriate, it makes me look more streamlined, and it goes with everything.  I bought a new couch, which is black, but that's all right, not only because of the dog hair but because it matches my curtains.  Yes, they are black, but not all of them.  I have tan ones on the insides.  Black and tan.....not the color scheme of a happy person.

On Easter, I was marveling at feeling so alive and not viciously angry, and I had the strongest urge to put a pastel table clothe on the table and decorate.  This hadn't happened to me for at least 10 years.  Maybe 15?  I looked at my tablecloths and I have 2 in a burnt orange, 1 in what we called "maroon" in the 80's, and a plaid one in tones of maroon and burnt orange run through with a little gold.  I also have a green and white checked one which has been ruined by numerous painting jobs by the kids over the years, so I couldn't really count that one.

There I stood in my kitchen, in a good mood that had lasted more than 15 minutes, for the first time in many years, looking around and realizing that in the last 10 years I have literally been in mourning, and that I was not feeling that way anymore.   Even more than that, I hadn't been feeling that way for a while.....this lightening of mood seemed to be sticking around.  This, too, was like a miracle.

I mean, you guys, it was like a miracle!  All I could think was that maybe 48 wouldn't be so bad.  It felt like I had woken up from a deep sleep.  I had not been in a deep sleep, literally, but I was emerging from the fog (link included if "fog" is not another color here--technology is not my friend)  of grief that I had been in for so long.  Lately it has felt like the sun is shining through.  Lately I have gotten up and enjoyed days instead of just slogging through them so I could go back to bed.  Lately I have actually smiled for real instead of just doing it so people would go away and leave me alone.  Lately I have felt more like myself again.  When I first started to notice it, I thought it was fluke, but it's not going away.  It's lasted long enough now that I am cautiously optimistic that it is not a phase.

What I think is that, living through these times, like dealing with cancer, comes terror, resolution, and finally, a kind of peace.  The worst thing you could ever imagine has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen.  You know this, and yet......here you still are, still you, still here.   Is it not a miracle that you can wake up every day and thank God for that, even after you've had the worst news you could ever hope to hear?  Is it not an act of faith to keep slogging through the days, even if you are only pretending?  Is it not a miracle if, after slogging through many years, one day you feel alive again?

We have moved, as a country, to a place I never thought we would.  I don't like it, and I fight it every day.  But still I go on, singing with the radio, smiling real smiles, hoping for the best but prepared for the worst.  Of course I'm prepared for the worst, you don't get to be 48 without learning that it never hurts to be jaded and cynical!  Otherwise you would just be an idiot, or a celebrity.  I will also admit that I have gotten old enough to take the attitude that whatever happens, I will not be the one to have to deal with it for that many more years, let alone pay for it.  On my worst days I symbolically tell younger generations "Good luck with that!" and laugh, because I fell for that crap too, when I was their age.  But only on the worst days, which are farther and farther apart.

These days I am mostly calm.  It is a calmness born of 10 years in the fog of grief and in the rain of constant disappointment, complete with dreary, mostly black props, and the knowledge that as long as there is still breath in my body, come what may, I have to keep going until my job is done. These 10 years may have seemed boring to those looking in from the outside, but in here it has been time well spent deciding what I really think, wrestling demons to the ground (then jumping up and throwing my hands in the sign for touchdown!)  and working on my faith.  I have never been alone for one second and the work has paid off: I feel peaceful and clear eyed, and ready, come what may.  I don't doubt that the hard times are getting closer daily, but I just show up to serve and let God take care of the rest.

And that, my friends, is my plan for the future, however much of it remains to me.   But I am definitely getting a pastel table clothe, too.  Life is too short to live surrounded with dreary props.  Don'tchathink?