Turtles, Tents, and Empty Nests.....

It's just me and the dogs this morning.  The boys are sleeping in.  I treasure my mornings alone, except for the dogs, these days, but sometimes..........

It's raining quite hard.  I looked out the front door and saw a turtle running across the road.  Yes, running.  You would be surprised how quick turtles can move in hard rain.  

This is when I really miss having little kids.  They would be up with me and would have run out to take his picture with me.  By now we would have him warmly ensconced in a nice box, with water and lettuce and would have already named him Harvey.  But instead I just came back inside.

Where I was greeted with the dogs freaking out because it was raining and I had left them for 2 minutes.  Now, I am going to tell you this.  Don't laugh.  Or do, go ahead.  It is kind of funny but may also be a totally legitimate symptom of "empty nest syndrome".  Some people would not tell such things on themselves, but that would not be me.

I made the dogs a tent.

You laughed, didn't you?  Oh well.  Since I like to sit on the back porch and drink coffee and blog, and since it has a roof you can hear the rain on and lots of windows I can open, and since the rain either hurts the dogs ears or scares them, and since Shadow particularly likes to only be under my legs at these times, I made them a tent.  I used the kitchen table and two comforters that need to be washed.  This is no time for laundry.

This is what middle age is like, I guess.  Being happy that you don't have little kids to run you ragged and then wishing you did and substituting dogs instead.  The dogs have not gotten into their tent.  I suppose I'll have to get in there, too...........dogs and children are remarkably similar.  Just sayin.

My Girls Rock

I am so very excited for this weekend to get here that I don't know how I'm going to be able to wait. 

This weekend there are going to be girls in my house.  No boys.  Just girls. 

Events have transpired to make it possible for me to spend at least Friday night and Saturday with not only The Beautiful Redhead, but my pretend grand baby and her mother, my Bonus Child!

Having cleaned the carpets and feeling like the queen of my domain, I am ready for them. 

Each one of these girls is so dear to my heart that they can make me cry at the drop of a hat.  They can also make me want to shake them at the drop of a hat, but that's how I know I REALLY REALLY love them!  That I let them live is testament to my love!  I can have faith here because I easily remember being just as stupid self involved brave and headstrong as they do now.  I have the sort of sinking feeling that it's time to tell them the reality version of some of the choices I made, instead of the bright, shining, cleaned up version I have striven so hard to maintain for so long.  Why would I do that?  To protect myself them, of course!!

We are going to eat whatever we want, regardless of it's nutritional value and with abandon, drink wine, take bubble baths, talk all the time, and do whatever that sweet baby dreams up.  I will be her Lady in Waiting for the entire night and following morning, at least.  Last time it was making tents that pleased her.  I actually have a real tent to put up in the basement that was a big winner with my own little ones......and a blow up mattress, should you be experienced in slavery to small children and be thinking ahead about how that could all go wrong.  I am prepared.  BRING IT.  She also is big enough now to drag the chair over to the sink, where she has spent many happy hours wearing rubber gloves, splashing water all over the place and sporadically throwing food around.  Shredded cheese is my least favorite substance for flinging, and in her defense, most of that is actually dropped.  Boiled eggs are probably my favorite flingable substance, but only if she hasn't eaten them down to the yolk yet.  This is how memories are made, people. 

I simply cannot wait. 

If I don't live to see my own grandchildren, God forbid it, I will die happy that I got the chance to pretend.  I have the best time with that child.  It's hard to explain how you can laugh out loud till tears run down your face for 20 miles in a row because you can hear her talking to someone on your cell phone and just kissing, kissing, kissing, whomever she is talking to, while simultaneously wondering who in God's name she really is calling and not caring enough to pull over and take away her happiness.  The entire time that was happening I was also feeling terrible because I knew she was missing her mother and wanting to make up for that.  You kind of had to be there.  Or to have been there once, at pretty much any point in your life.  You never forget those moments, nor should you.  I just always have the best time with her--sniff, sniff.

Also, my kids will have a good idea of what a grandmother is supposed to do.  It is one of the things that have amazed me the most, as a mother, how we change ours life styles in order to give our children a picture of what a mother is supposed to be like.  Like a filter that we conform to, even the most selfish of us.  This is bringing me to a little bit of a throw down I had to have with one of my oldest, best friends, whose mother has Alzheimer's Syndrome.  But that is another story for another day. I won't forget, and I want to end this post on a positive note.  Positive notes are getting more rare every day.  So unless the world stops spinning before this weekend, I have something to look forward to.  I need it, it's been a looooooong winter.