Put out the sun, dismantle the moon, tear up all the flowers

The bloom is off the rose of love.  Or so it seems when your Valentine killed himself one year ago. How did I mark the anniversary of being notified of my husband's suicide? I had a couple kids over for a sleepover and let the four younguns trash the house.  How did I mark the anniversary of the Valentine's Day I had last year, when I was tearing about buying pills and clothes for my kids to wear to their father's funeral?  I had a cookie decorating and craft party for my daughters and friends, and let the five younguns trash the house. Despite my fifty dollars worth of icing, cookies, new scissors and rolls of tape, they ended the affair not with things of pink but with making Fairy Soup by grinding grass and bits of plants with rocks into a wooden bowl of water on the front porch.  And I let the bowl stay there, to attract the odd Fairy who might happen by. I hope she might put the bloom back on the rose. Maybe even plant the rose.  And when we got good and exhausted, the next day, to mark the anniversary of the funeral, we stayed in our pajamas and hung out, and hung on, and we rested.  Enough grieving. I've been a widow for one year, and the book sucks, so now I need to add some new chapters,

Spousal suicide / PTSD / parenting scorecard

Compliments on how I am doing at staying sober and alive - a few

My ability to teach my kids that we can dislike what Daddy did but still love him - better than expected

My keeping an atmosphere in which they express love for Daddy - amazing

Feeling a boatload of PTSD symptoms as I deal with estate, taxes, and what to do with the cremains - better than you might think but still packing a whallop

Ability to get rid of Daddy's car and clothes - still behind the curve

Number of counseling appointments this week for the three girls who live here - 3

Number of people for whom the counselor says we are almost done - 1 (not me)

Number of times I burst into tears at memories and intrusive thoughts today - just 2

If my arms weren't numb and my hands not so shaky I would be kicking butt and taking names.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Perhaps I shouldn't try to pretend that my life is of Dickensian proportions in any aspect, but that phrase just seems to describe the place my head goes quite frequently.  I think I might always look back on this as a time when my girls were so delightfully lovely, so amazingly situated between babyhood and childhood, so tasty they are very nearly edible, and yet, I will also look back on this month as a time of cleaning up urine with enough frequency that I think perhaps I was cut out to be a medical assistant, after all.  And I always thought I couldn't do that job!   Hannah is suddenly much more grown up now, shouting to all who will listen that she's got panties! and yet she is still so very much just a big version of a baby, being still so capable of treacherous body movements that are intended to harm the person who carries her.  If she can arch her back like that she does NOT have limited trunk control.  It takes skill to do that kind of twist out of a parent's arms while kicking maneuver, I think.  I am behind in every single area of my life.  Each and every one.  It is true that I send out quite a few Christmas cards each year, and I will do so for 2011, but that doesn't mean I have taken the cards received in 2010 off the mantel.  No, not kidding.  My friend doesn't like that I run late all the time but how I am supposed to know that I need to build time in the schedule for someone to knock her bowl of Ramen noodles (with egg, for extra glue-ability) on the floor right when we needed to get out the door.  How?  And yet I am doing something right, because the current most common phrases spoken in our house between the two girls are "you my best friend!" replied to with "you my best friend too!"  (let's ignore that it often devolves into a fight where each girls insists "NO! You MY best friend!!" emphasizing the my and completely ignoring the fact they are really in agreement but if they acknowledged that then they wouldn't have anything to fight about.)


Things of randomosity:

A dream I probably shouldn't tell you about, but I will . . .

Which had me galloping around a room, thinking I am riding a horse, then realizing I am only slapping my own ass as if I were slapping the ass of the horse I rode in on . . . and then eating my birthday cake without using my hands, possibly in the presence of a man with whom I was about to do the deed.  Some of these events have roots in history, but that doesn't mean I can explain how it all came together.

Recently, at my house . . .

My husband spent the dinner hour hogging my laptop again, looking at videos posted to YouTube of seven year old girls operating track hoe / back hoe/ big machine-thingies. I wondered how he got there and he actually started with "truck crashes"  and the internet just led him to the seven year olds driving, really.

Current trends . . .

Claire now asks that her YouTube video playlist (previously limited to Tom Petty, Nick Kershaw, Alice Cooper and the Red Hot Chili Peppers) now has expanded to more age appropriate selections such as "Mana Mana" and Claire can always get the "do do do do" just right.

Poop is now officially funny.

Hello, is that you?

Are you still here?  God help me I don't know why you are here, I haven't been.  Maybe you are still here because you heard that I've gotten a little cuter lately?  I can tell because the Jiffy Lube man touched my bare leg today (he pretended he was removing the paper protecting my car's interior from greasy boots) and he left a grease streak across my very white knee, as he smiled his toothless smile at me and told me how much he enjoyed giving great customer service.  His gums do the talking while his fingers do the walking - I was just so impressed.  It is rare that I need to use Goop to clean my legs after I run errands, but some days you just know fortune favors you.  Really, I got a sassy new summer haircut, bought a couple of floral summer dresses at Target and I am CUTE!  I know the man without teeth thought so because he was so willing to share his stories with me, impressing me with how-to tips on getting small animal body parts off engines (milk and tomato juice) and other things too powerful to share here in such a public forum.  Well OK, he did (conspiratorially) sneak two coffee packets off the free drinks cart and tell me the secret to solving corrosion on battery terminals using only black coffee.  But that is all I am going to say about that.  I bet he could get those teeth back if he wanted to.  And his grease looked so . . . dark . . . on my knee.  Ah well, perhaps I'll just stick with the husband I have.   He also thinks I am cute.  I know because he pinched my derriere.   And he didn't leave a stain on my new dress when he did it. 

Halloween part two

This seems like old news but I can't stand skipping the pictures so here we go. If you noticed the Belle dresses on the girls at their costume parade party at school from the post last week, you might notice a lot of glitter. Did I mention there was a lot of glitter? Glitter doesn't really stick very well to fabric, but it is really effective on baby skin. In the time it took me to hold Hannah through the magic show, I must have gotten three glitter chunks in my right eye. Hannah's binky was covered in glitter, which was probably made by melamine eating slaves in China, and is likely to affect Hannah's future girl children in some horrific way. I knew that day that three days later it was likely the dresses would have some unfortunate accident that would cause them to be ruined (I thought it might involve tomato soup on Halloween, after trick or treating). Rain made Claire willing to change her plan and wear the candy costumes from our last parade entry, and Hannah likes to copy Claire so we went to a party and then trick or treating in other costumes. And some glitter turned up in my eyebrow, again.

Lord Honey beat me in the hands free donut eating contest. Because I love you, I will let you see this picture of me in half a convict costume, thinking that the donut will distract you from the size of my rack in that polyester, horizontally striped shirt.

The girls collected buckets of candy in a short time, Lord Honey carrying Hannah through the rain to save my neck and back.  I'm glad that one is behind me, and the dresses are out in the can.  I only "lost" them, in case they ask.  Whew.  Hey, is that glitter in your eye or are you crying?

To Lord Honey, on his forty first birthday

We love you, Big Muffin. 

Summertime and the partying is easy

This post is overly long in coming out - I've been frustrated by an inability to post videos. I've now officially given up on posting videos on Blogger without using YouTube, even though it worked two weeks ago. Arrgghhh! So, here you have the family cast of characters, at the day care summer picnic. Now imagine you are seeing a video of Hannah dancing while standing in front of the band, swinging her arm to keep time, and the sax player keeping the beat with her, and the crowd around her overcome with oohs and ahhs and oh my god that's cute reactions. Now imagine Hannah over by herself dancing, and bending her knees so she can stick her tiny wee butt out, because I told her she needed more booty. Now imagine Hannah dancing, and Claire stepping into the frame to show some of the moves from her ballet class, like arabesque and tendu, and Hannah clapping. Now imagine seeing the parents of the day care kids (myself included, especially since you can't see it) doing silly games to try to win the grand prize of $100 off tuition. Lord Honey was pretty fast pulling Kleenex from a box, one at a time, but not fast enough. Now imagine my friend's husband picking up cotton balls with his nose well greased with Vaseline, and then shaking them off into his target bowl, all without using his hands. Sadly, he too was not fast enough. All this hilarity led Claire to tell me the next day, "that was a really fun party last night, Mama, but I am really tired."

What passes for Domestic Bliss

Many years ago I had a dog who liked to sit on the sofa when I was out, even though he was not allowed to do so. When he'd hear my car he'd pop down onto the floor and as I came in the door he'd get up from the floor, stretching nonchalantly as if he'd just now used his legs after hours of holding still. The sofa cushions were still warm from his body and covered in golden retriever hair.

My family very much needs to move our morning wake up time back by an hour or more, for a variety of reasons, for the naps for the baby in the morning at day care, or for me to get to work on time so I could leave earlier and begin dinner before Lord Honey brings in the kids, etc. For a lot of reasons this would be a great move, but has been difficult to achieve.

My parents are possibly the most rigid people on earth. They truly do not vary their bed times and waking hours at all. Daylight Savings Time is the greatest upheaval in their lives. To try to accommodate the change, they change all the clocks on the upper level of their house by 15 minutes every two days and go to bed and wake by that schedule, until the change is complete. I decided to employ this strategy and set both clocks in our bedroom to an earlier wakeup time, maybe by fifteen minutes per week until I achieved my goals.

Night before last I was changing the two alarm clocks in our bedroom to go off fifteen minutes earlier than we have had set for ages. As I bent over to reach Lord Honey's clock, on his side of the bed, my leg went up behind me in a stretchy sort of arabesque pose. It felt great so I left it there a minute, then switched legs and held that pose. Lord Honey walked in and saw me. Now, he may be married to me, may have had to check my c-section staples not once but twice, and probably as the man who shares my bed he knows better than anyone what my physical flaws and general mass really are, but I still don't like him seeing me stretch in such an odd and probably unflattering way. I dropped my leg immediately and said nothing about the clock change, just explaining that I was stretching.

The next morning, after his customary three pushes of the snooze button Lord Honey finally dragged his skinny white ass out of bed, and after a cup of coffee accused me of acting like Jarvis, my long dead couch sleeping stretch faking dog. "What?" I spluttered. He cocked his Spockian eyebrow at me and slowly stretched his leg behind him in a purposeful arabesque. "You didn't say anything about changing the alarm time, dearie."

Now, If he wants me to have a laugh, he stands nearby and stretches his leg out behind himself nonchalantly.

And this is is how it is that we stay married, for better or for worse.

Four years and two babies ago

Exactly four years ago tonight, Lord Honey and I came home from our wedding and went to bed, to sleep. We were exhausted and exhilarated and ready to fly to Hawaii the next day, if only to get warm. I remember feeling so overcome with emotion, and grateful, and hopeful, it kind of cracks me up to reflect on how I felt. I had wondered if Lord Honey was the right man for me, but made up my mind to give it my best. Now looking back, with all that water under the bridge, the reasons to worry look pretty different. And how would you know just what water would go under your bridge, and just whose skills would be needed? That multiple times I would call Lord Honey from a hospital room, shrieking about a baby coming too soon, or a baby coming now, or a baby that came and then went floppy, and all the rides in the car back and forth to the babies, and all those sleepless nights. And he was calm, Water, bridge. Bridge, water. Talk amongst yourselves, we need to grab a cup of coffee. And then the little things, more like puddles on the edge of the water under the bridge, like Lord Honey singing "The Battle of New Orleans" with me in a call and answer fashion while I shower and then finding the video of the song on You Tube. These were things I didn't see coming when I made my wedding vows.

Sweet Hannah got sent home from daycare today, after her caregiver was worried by how much she coughed while she napped, so she woke her up! So we opted not to put the girls at the babysitting night they were hosting at the day care, and instead stayed home with the wee ones and had pizza and watched Up. While I put the girls down one by one, Lord Honey crashed on the sofa and now refuses to go to bed although he cannot wake up enough to watch our grownup movie. This must mean we really are an old married couple. I had at least hoped for some anniversary action, but by the time I go to bed I'll be too tired myself. Maybe next week.

Friday haiku: anniversary thoughts

The deli clerk at
our grocery store says Jason
is "not bad looking!"

Unfailingly kind,
faithful and true, and gentle
and tolerates me.

He works very hard
finishing our new garage
and doesn't complain

that he's on the roof
and its just seven degrees
with no sun shining.

Some marriages fail
when faced with adversity
I think ours will not.

Our life doesn't suck.
Today, I'm glad we married
four short years ago.

Shiny, shiny gold bling

Lord Honey has a new utility knife, the gold model. Note the gold trim, and gold tipped blade. Don't you just want him to be your . . . handyman? And yes TeacherMommy, he does carry it in his Carhartts. I have seen this man cut wood, metal, sheet rock, hose, tile, wires, plastic bits without regular names, and painlessly remove a splinter from my child's hand with such a knife. The last three or four were yellow and rather ordinary as such tools go. But this one? This one speaks to me. Now I go off to bed singing "the handyman can 'cause he mixes it with love and makes the world work good."