Daughters! Sugar, spice, and everything nice!

I have two.  Just got online, looked at my stats, and found that someone was looking at a post from four years ago, a Friday Haiku for Claire the Magnificent.  Four years ago!! 2009!  Before a number of things made me come unglued altogether . . . and so here she is, still Magnificent.

Not only Magnificent but wonderful altogether, and keeping me grounded and happy.  Here's to Claire, who is almost a second grader with the ability to read "Middle Grade" books and the wisdom to know how much she enjoys that ability. My mini-me in all the very best ways. And brave, and strong, and true.  My hero!

Who is miserable now?

So while I was away from this space, the physical space around me was altered by maturing and growing children.  Hannah is headed to Kindergarten soon, totally mainstream. Claire now wears clothes sized nearly to her age, Hannah, though still stick figure skinny, could actually get out of the big toddler car seat and into a 35 pound rated booster . . . but worse than that, is the vocabulary growth.  Claire made a witty joke about the womb when she heard Hannah morph the r in room.  Granted she is all for a low grade knock-knock joke as well, but when I recently offered her a bit of my cheese toast, she, observing my fruit salad topped with whip-its delight said "my eyes are on the cream." WTF? When first she said "what the heck is going on?" I blamed her environment and heaved more than one sigh of relief that the phrase came from a wretched popular children's movie.  Last week I promptly lost all my helicopter parent cred by showing her YouTube shorts of songs from Les Mis, which she now begs for daily.  Mommy can we watch Red and Black? And then Do You Hear the People Sing? Sure I say, until I hit upon a making of the movie clip, and got stuck when the costume director explained the color choices for prostitutes coordinating with the imprisoned slaves.  Oh yeah, Mommy, nicely played.  Now explain prostitutes, slavery and metaphor.  When I told Claire that Fantine sold her body I said she sold her hair and her . . . teeth.  True!  She did!  And some other stuff.  And then I had to decide that I wasn't ready to show them Les Mis yet. I don't know which character she would emulate (Javert?) but I don't want to find out.

Um . . .Hello!

Hey gang. Sorry to go AWOL on you that way.  Blogging took a back seat after a bit and eventually got pushed right off my radar altogether as I tried to keep myself from falling apart, and ultimately failed.  Short recap: my mom indeed did die, shortly after my last post; my head got seriously mixed up (more on that later); marriage got worse; ultimately I was widowed (more on that later too) about 4 months ago, and I am now getting back on my feet and right side up (barely, more on that later also).  If you are still here, shout out and say so.  I loved you all before and I still do. It totally cracks me up that I am getting traffic here having been absent so long.  You will be rewarded but first I must find my funny and poignant keyboard for blogging, instead of the wistful hindsight is 20/20 keyboard.

Gas Food Lodging will be resurrected as I still have kids who require gas, food, and lodging and a whole lot more, and I will likely blog elsewhere too but am still setting that one up.  My daughters are doing fabulously for those who want to know - growing like weeds and full of fun - and are coping with things far better than I, since they have that eternal magical zen quality of living primarily in the now.  Be patient with me, I'll be back.

WTF Wednesday: If she could see or use her hands she might kill me for this

My aging mother is aging out, and on an exit plan now, I am afraid.  She won't be with us much longer.  I was tucking her in at the nursing home and as she slept I noticed this heart shaped age spot.  Like everyone she had good fortune and bad in her 83 years, but I think this is proof positive that her life was marked by love - she was madly in love with my father, and after a few years of painful loneliness when she was widowed with three young children, she had the great good luck to have met my stepfather, who has loved her well for what will be 40 years come July, if that anniversary comes.  Not everyone gets one great love, but my mom got two.  Love leaves it mark, always and indelibly. 

WTF Wednesday: How Will I Know if the Flavor is Authentic?

Hello from the land of running in place, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and sucking at life

I must have 5 posts in the works, ready to go when I manage to upload photos of videos from the new iPad but someone how the "git 'er done!" phase just never comes to pass.  Why is that?  Is it the old folks in the nursing home?  Is it answering Claire's questions like why doesn't Grandma turn her head  (because she stopped doing it and now she can't)?  Is it getting too distracted with delight and laughter when Hannah says things like "that is stinky, indeed!"  I thought February would bring a modicum of peace and at least a less frenzied pace and I was wrong, on all accounts.  My husband thinks I am nuts to put Hannah (and Claire, obviously) in swimming lessons if it means he has to get up on Saturday, no matter how many times I tell him that the use of her hand starts in the strength of her shoulder and getting her to a full stroke in swimming would be huge in PT and OT ways.  And I still have to combat the badness of my cute idea as a baby to let her play with receipts from all my shopping because she would crunch them in both hands and stuff them in the bag and tear them and so on - only to find out all that register paper is loaded with BPA.  After carefully putting my breastmilk in BPA free bottles she will still get breasts at age 8 because I gave her receipts to use to stimulate her hand.  Best OT tip of the week - buy half price Valentines for next year, and to play with this year so you can more half price sets to get the child tearing things apart at the perforations, and hanging window clings.  (but don't say crap to me if they were all made from melamine eating child slaves in China)

One last thing to say before bed, besides that I don't know anything about the Oscars because I only saw 5 kids movies all year and Puss in Boots and Harry Potter were snubbed, so I skipped an Oscars party to stay home, read to the girls and bedgthem to wear clothes, and work a pile of files from work . . .  are you ready . . . . are you sure . . . .Girl Scout cookies are in on Monday! 

Things I learned recently at my mom's new nursing home

In January, all ice is slippy, even in parking lots full of old people who might drive over a woman who is lying on the slippy ice, thinking "I've fallen and I can't get up.  This can't be happening to me . . . again . . . and are those stars or cartoon birds circling my head?"

And I would like to note that as far as the sandwich generation goes, I think I am the mayonnaise.  Never be a condiment when you could have been a staple, right?  Grease is generally the wrong choice, do you agree?

My aging parents are aging out quickly - I have been having regular conversations with my daughters that Grandma may not be around much longer.  Worse still, the nightly Claire cuddle and discussion to run down the key points of her day all too often involves me spending too much time explaining things that defy explanation - heaven, death, reincarnation, how the baby Jesus fits in all this, why we need inside voices in the nursing home chapel when it has such lovely acoustics for making echos, and why the "outdoor" baby Jesus has now disappeared from the front entrance to the (Catholic run) nursing home in which we have recently installed my mother.  It was actually pretty hard to explain the fake manger alone, since "no room at the Inn" seems so unlikely given the number of Holiday Inn Express locations we pass regularly.  The Magi also presented some challenges, showing up at the drop off driveway late, as they did, and with non-matching head coverings. 

I don't like holding someone else's teeth.  Under any circumstances and regardless of how much it helps a really demanding and nutty old lady . . . I really hate touching the dentures.  Fake teeth are somewhat distressing but fake gums . . . that just isn't right right.  Mom had just been fairly sweet and my sister and I were feeling somewhat sympathetic when she asked us to glue her dentures back in since someone who had recently done the job had failed to use enough adhesive.  I quailed at the thought.  Some of my worst teen aged hangovers were those I had when I still slept at my parents house and would use the bathroom they used and have to use their sinks.  I will never be able to forget what spilled powdered denture adhesive does in a sink. (Tell your kids - this is yet one more reason to go to college: so one might have the kind of job that provides dental insurance so one can have implants and not be limited to dentures.  Yay, me!  Yay college! Yay Law School! Yay!!!) Powdered adhesive might come out of the bottle green but it is made to look like the gums it adheres to - so the overspray of green Fasteeth powder would hit the water droplets in the sink and make little globs of pale pink fake gum tissue, glistening in the sink all day long. Possibly all week long unless someone was motivated.  Hungover teenagers are not motivated to remove disgusting things from sinks, they just gag and try to move on.  Or move out, and in with a boyfriend.  I digress, though.  My mother now uses adhesive that looks a lot more like toothpaste and that is a distinct improvement since I was not required to handle even a little bit of fake gum tissue.  My sister and I shared the odious task.

I am so glad I am not a CNA.

Other Grandmas in the nursing home are jealous of my Mom's grand kids coming in so often, and frequently try to get a handhold of young girl as they run by.

Claire and Hannah are not as afraid of arthritically misshapen hands coming at their heads as I might have expected them to be.  I think they know that all these other Grandmas are truly interested in getting up close and personal and so they exploit it by smiling and shouting and then pretending to be shy.  When my family members pretend to be shy (or suddenly are) they get a lot closer to me.  I am a little tired of just how far up my butt Hannah can stuff her head when it is time to hide.  Somehow I still get surprised.  But if Lord Honey tries that at the next party we go to I really will strangle him, because I am pretty well done with head up my butt syndrome - this is where I put my head after all, and my butt is not that big.  I have been losing weight, people.  This is a one head butt.  No room at the Inn.